On Tuesday, Shilpa Bengre was on her daily stroll on Mangaluru’s Bengre beach. The time was 6:30 am but like most days in the last three months, Shilpa began picking up the trash she found washed ashore on the beach. “The most common things we find are thermocol, alcohol bottles and slippers,” Shilpa says.
Shilpa, 27, is a swimming instructor in Mangaluru and a resident of Bengre, a coastal area in Mangaluru, and Tuesday was the 100th day of a quiet beach cleaning drive taken up by a group of people from the city. The group - BoskyOrb - has lifted more than 25 tonnes of garbage from the beach in this period. Bosky means to be covered by trees or bushes and orb refers to the spherical shape of the earth.
The initiative began in mid-October when Shreyas Holla, 24, a chartered accountancy student and Harsha Kotian 24, a lecturer based in Mangaluru, decided to do something about the alarming amount of waste found in the city’s beaches. “We were classmates in college and we used to go to beaches regularly. We noticed that in the last few months, after the lockdown, the shore in Bengre beach was filled with waste. There was no one taking initiative as this was not frequented by visitors like Tannirbhavi beach and Panambur beach,” says Harsha speaking to TNM.
The duo decided to clean the beach every day and they soon found support from people like Shilpa, who resides close to the beach. “I joined them after the 10th day or so. I noticed that they were cleaning the beach and I asked my brother and my cousin to take half an hour every morning to help with this,” says Shilpa. “A lot of waste is found on this beach because this is a delta and the waste in the Gurupura and Phalguni river gets accumulated here,” she adds.
She is now supported by a group of local women from Bengre, including Shifali Shriyan, Vidhita Karkera and Manisha Suvarna, who turn up at the beach to clean the waste on a regular basis.
BoskyOrb’s efforts mirror many other like-minded volunteer efforts to clean beaches in coastal Karnataka. ‘Clean Kundapura’, another volunteer beach cleaning initiative has held weekly programmes to clean beaches in Kundapura for the last three years. On Sunday, the group, along with another youth group FSL India, even built a temporary enclosure to protect a batch of Olive Ridley turtle eggs, spotted at the beach for the first time since 2016.
Read: Olive Ridley turtle eggs found in Karnataka’s Kundapura for first time in four years
Olive Ridley sea turtle eggs in Kundapura
In November 2020, Anudeep Hegde and Minusha Kanchan, a couple from Baindur in Udupi, decided to clean Someshwara Beach without fanfare. The couple bought two pairs of gloves, large garbage bags, and got to work clearing hundreds of kilos of waste over 10 days.
Read: Meet the Karnataka newlyweds who cleared hundreds of kilos of waste from a beach
Anudeep and Minusha
Similarly, surf clubs like Mantra Surf Club in Mulki, Shaka Surf Club and Kadal Surf Club in Udupi, along with other clubs like Kayakboy in Mulki, have held beach cleaning and river cleaning drives in the last few years.
Kayakboy and other local fishermen recently spotted a large amount of waste illegally dumped near the river in Hejamadi in Udupi. Some of this waste had toppled over and fallen into the Shambhavi River and when the Padubidri Gram Panchayat was alerted about this, it emerged that a private contractor hired by the panchayat had dumped the waste on a private land close to the river since he did not have enough space to manage the waste collected. He was pulled up and ordered to clear the waste by district authorities.
Read : Contractor pulled up for illegally dumping waste on Udupi riverbank
In all of these cases, volunteer groups of people living close to beaches are spearheading drives to keep beaches and rivers in coastal Karnataka clean. “We are now cleaning the beaches regularly and we have volunteers turning up. But the question now is what do we do after collecting the waste?” asks Harsha Kotian.
His group in Bengre hands over the waste collected to the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) for disposal but he says that they are looking at ways they can recycle the waste. “Some of the waste can be recycled and used. We want this to happen but we are struggling to find waste recyclers we can work with,” says Harsha. “We have not come across anyone in Mangaluru who recycles plastic and thermocol and we are looking to engage with organisations or people who do this,” he says.
The group turned up at the beach to clean on Wednesday and says they have no plans of stopping after completing 100 days. “We went to the beach as always today and the cleaning work will continue as well as the awareness campaigns and events like beach cleanups on Sundays,” says Shilpa. “We also plan to plant saplings in the future,” she adds.