More Trashbins

Great news! Mr. Prashanth Prakash, who has his roots in the Nandigram village, has confirmed the order of 40 dustbins to be installed on the hilltop. More details shortly.

Nandi Hills cleanup drive – 24th Aug 2008

We started out seeking to establish a permanent solution to the litter problem in Nandi hills. On Sunday I think we took a significant step. This was never meant to be a simple cleanup drive because we knew that the garbage we pick up this sunday will find its way back before the next. We had to enlist the support of the powers that be. We had to make “noise”. That was the intention of involving the district commissioner’s office and the high court judges. The DC announced the zone plastic-free. The enforcement began in full earnest. Visitors were stopped at the gates, and asked to throw away their plastics, and paper bags were handed over to them. At the shops on the hilltop, shopkeepers cut open packets, emptied condiments into paper bags and handed them over. The cynics asked “How long will this really go on?”. Watch this space.

The morning began with about 20 esteemed judges from the Karnataka high court, along with the District Minister, pledging their support to this cause. After the short ceremony, we spread ourselves out and started collecting the garbage. Within an hour and a half we had more garbage than the truck could carry on one trip. We also managed to fill our second mini-truck that was transporting the plastic to be recycled.

pic:Deepa Mohan

It has been an amazing few weeks. Most heartening of all has been the number of people who have wanted to join us on this campaign. Although turning down several people during the last couple of days was a hard thing to do, it still felt heartening to see the sheer number of people who are willing to lend their hands to this. I think if we can only channelize all that intent, we can accomplish a whole lot of things. However, all hasn’t been rosy. Here are a few things that frustrated us.

* The number of people who turned up (600, judging by the amount of food consumed) threw us off-track a bit. This not only meant that some people were just completely uninterested in the cleaning up, but also resulted in us leaving a rather large carbon footprint in the process.
* In the melee, we also failed to effectively communicate the guidelines for the segregation of waste. This meant that a lot of plastic that could have been used for other purposes went to the landfills.

* There were too many people taking credit for nothing. Here’s our opportunity to acknowledge the real people behind this.

We thank…

* The DC, Mr. Subodh Yadav. He definitely is the man who can make or break this endeavour. So far, his support and execution have been irrefutable.
* There were a lot of judges present, and the numbers in which they turned up was definitely important, but one person deserves special mention. Justice Subhash Adi! His drive and commitment and the way he has managed to rally his peers around this cause has been really uplifting.
* Our sponsors, Yahoo!. The PR team from Yahoo! has backed us fantastically.
* Mr.Vivek Reddy and Mr. Arun, advocates who managed to provide everybody breakfast and lunch. Their energy is most inspiring. They have an ambitious target in their ongoing afforestation efforts at Nandi, and we hope we can support them in that campaign the way they have supported us in these last few days.
* Mr. Mahantesh Murgod, Special officer Nandi Hills and Mr.Rajashekar, DFO, Chikkaballapur.
* Roopa Sankaran from Clean & Green, who provided almost all the information we needed.
* All our volunteers. My hope is that we keep this association going and shoot for bigger things.

Some media mentions

Deepa’s report

Hindu

The Last Lap (Please note change in date)

We are on the final lap of preparations for the Nandi Hills cleanup drive. Here are a few things that we wanted to convey

* Several volunteers called us to have the drive shifted to Sunday 24th August. This also came in as a request from the DC ’s office who wanted this to happen on a government holiday so that we could solicit better involvement from the government authorities. So please note that the drive has been postponed by one day. It’s now going to happen on the 24th August. If you have forwarded information about this campaign to other groups or mailing lists (hasiruUsiru for eg), please make sure that you update them with this new information.

* So far we’ve had amazing co-operation from the DC’s office, Forest Department, Youth services, Horticulture department and the other authorities. We are confident that the area will be declared plastic-free. More importantly, we are sure that we will be able to prevail upon them to enforce the rules strictly.

* A group of high court judges are very enthusiastic about joining us on this drive. This was another reason why we decided to shift it to Sunday. Also, we have joined hands with the advocates association of Bangalore, and together we plan to combine the cleanup drive with an afforestation effort. There is going to be a sapling planting event in the morning of the 24th too. The district forest office is blessing this effort.

* We have to start arranging for the transportation soon. We request all volunteers to mention their location in Bangalore in the spreadsheet so that we can accordingly decide the start points of the transport vehicles. Please note that we won’t be able to have too many start points, and that we might ask you to arrange your own commute to a common location.

* We have funds left for about 10 trash bins. However, we got to know from the horticulture department that this number is hardly enough for the 60 acres that is in their jurisdiction. If any of you have ideas/funds for the remaining 20 or so trash bins we’d love to hear from you as soon as possible.

That’s it for now. In the coming week, we’ll be getting in touch with each of the volunteers to co-ordinate the whole drive.

Joining hands with Clean & Green

Clean and Green is a group of volunteers (http://cleanngreen.blogspot.com/, mailto:cleanandgreen@googlegroups.com) who have conducted very similar campaigns in other parts of the state, and we thought we should join hands with them. The confluence forms a bigger community of volunteers and we also learn from their experiences. Here are some of the notes from our meeting with Roopa from Clean and Green.

Inventory needed

* Workman gloves – 50

* Garbage bags and/or gunny sacks (50)

* Large needle to stitch the gunny sacks

* Weighing scale

* Rakes (10, apart from the ones we can borrow from the Nandi Hills gardeners)

* Trashbins (12 monkey-proof ones)

* Basic first-aid kit.

Garbage segregation

The garbage that we collected should be segregated as follows

* This polythene covers.

* PET (bottles), ice-cream cups, spoons etc.

* Composite (Gutkha wrappers, Lays etc)

* LEAVE THE GLASS BOTTLES ALONE. They can injure people

Tips for volunteers

Please bring enough water. Rehydrate often.

Get a poncho and a cap.

The rains wash up the garbage to hard-to-reach places on the hill face. At least some of us need shoes with good grips. That said, let’s not taking any unwise risks.
Further action items

Please leave a comment if you want to take up one or more of these.

* Arrange for transportation (contact Rakesh Chandra from Oracle)

* Order food (Contact caterer at nandi hills)

* Buy bags, needles and gloves (contact Rakesh Chandra for the gloves and the rakes)

* Speak with KK Plastics to see if they want to consume the plastic that we collect. They use the plastic to strengthen asphalt that’s used on the roads.

* Contact Sandeep Chakravarthy. He can put us in touch with Vinay Luthra from KSTDC and Rajaram (who runs a waste management firm) to discuss some long-term garbage disposal scheme.

* Communicate our plan to the DC, Mr. Subodh Yadav. Discuss if he’s ok with branding on the dustbins.

* Buy paper bags to provide to the shop-keepers at the hill top. Decide the size and numbers (and any branding opportunities for our sponsors).

Litter-free Nandi Hills

Nandi Hills is a hill station situated about 60kms from Bangalore. Apart from all the lure that the place has just on account of being a hill, Nandi Hills has a lot of historical significance too. It also affords some magnificient views.

However, with the tourists comes the trash. The hill face is littered with polythene and paper. It is depressing no doubt. But while we were sulking over the apathy of the general population, we also wondered if we were really as helpless about the situation as we pretend to be. That’s how we came up with the idea of swarming the hill one day and cleaning up as much as we can.

When?
Saturday, 23rd August, 2008. (to begin with)

How can you help?
1. Ideas: How do we make this effort sustainable and not a one-time fad? How do we raise consciousness and stop people from littering the place in the first place? If you have conducted a similar exercise, we’d love to hear from you.
2. Hands: Leave a comment with a trackback if you want to join us on this drive. We’ll need vehicles to bring back the garbage too.
3. Sponsors: We need gloves and garbage bags for the volunteers. We also plan to set up a trash disposal system there with dustbins at regular distances. This costs money. Let us know if you would like to pitch in.

Send a mail to litterfree [at] ymail [dott] com.

or call 99809 40872

If you want to volunteer, put your name here http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pcg6l1lkoIvWHV7LIScCKMA&hl=en

The plan

- Enlist 40 volunteers.

- Hire a bus to ferry us to the hill. The plan is to reach there at least by 6:30 in the morning.

- Fill as many bags of garbage as possible. We have requested the authorities to send a garbage truck to move the trash to an appropriate landfill.