The ‘Beach Clean-up Drive’ hit its crescendo in Mumbai recently, when over 100 residents, Bollywood celebrities, NCC Volunteers, Dalip Tahil – Indian Legendary Actor, Afroz Shah – Lawyer & Environmental Activist, Col. Tushar Joshi – Sena Medal and Ministry officials, including Anil Mishra and Abhishek Mishra – Advisory Panel Members into CBFC, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Vatsal Joshi – Founder, Krishna Kunj Productions, gathered to manually remove over lakhs of trash from the 2.5-km long beach, effectively making it the biggest beach clean-up.
The waste was collected and segregated as wet & dry waste and accordingly handed over to civic officials. After the beach clean-up, Vatsal Joshi along with DPIFF sailed towards Malad creek with local fishermen in their boats and held nets while pulling out more than 1,000 kilograms of plastic bags and food wrappers. A spark has been ignited with the success of this citizen-civic model of beach clean-ups.
Vatsal Joshi is a nature lover and film-making enthusiast. He has also worked as a “Forest Eco-Tourism Promoter” in Hyderabad and has won several accreditations and awards in filmmaking.
Vatsal Joshi – Founder, Krishna Kunj Productions says, “Cleaning the beach also improves the coastal and ocean ecosystem by ensuring that none of the trash kills marine life. We have to give something to our coming generations and currently, we are in the process of giving them a clean environment.”
A hardcore environmentalist at heart, Afroz Shah has always been an advocate of zero waste and plastic ban to bring about a change in the environment and the rising climate crisis. Afroz Shah added, “This is a campaign that needs to be funded, planned and scaled, the beach segmented and it needs four stakeholders, government, businesses, media and citizens to each play a role. Ultimately, however, the government and local administration are responsible for ensuring beaches are clean and rivers are clean and that is not a responsibility they can delegate to citizens who pay taxes to see that beaches are safe and clean.”
Talking about the initiative, Actor Dalip Tahil said, “For me, the environment is of utmost priority. With the ongoing climate crisis and change in environmental conditions, all of us must take a stand and work towards its betterment in every possible way.”
