When the young Indian lawyer and his 84-year-old friend reached the edge of one of Mumbai’s largest beaches, they stared out in disbelief at the vast blanket of rotting litter that had grown shin-deep in places.
Plastic bags, cement bags, glass bottles, pieces of clothing, shoes and other litter covered every inch of sand, turning the once-pristine coastline into a wasteland.
Undaunted by the herculean scale of the task, the unlikely duo – the 33-year-old Afroz Shah and his octogenarian neighbour Harbanash Mathur – rolled up their shirt sleeves, walked down to the beach and began picking up trash. Thus started what has since mushroomed into the world’s largest ever beach clean-up.
“The amount of plastic on the beach had to be seen to be believed. It was a horrendous and disturbing sight,” said Shah, who decided to launch a local movement to clean Versova Beach after seeing the “large patches of filth and plastic” from his nearby apartment. “We were in shock at the sight, but I felt a sense of relief that at least we are going to attempt to clean the beach and the ocean.”
Since that first, sultry day in October last year Shah’s clean-up operation has scooped two million kilograms of litter from the 2.5 kilometre beach – roughly equivalent to the weight of 1,000 SUVs. Last weekend alone, volunteers filled 57 large trucks with litter.
But the massive clean-up has not only begun to claw back the beach’s natural beauty. It has also stopped the litter from washing into the sea and joining the 13 million tonnes of plastic and other rubbish that pollutes the world’s oceans, where it wreaks economic havoc on fisheries and severely harms marine life.
One of the gravest threats to the health of our oceans comes from microplastics – tiny plastic beads found in personal care products or created through the breakdown of larger items. These insidious plastic granules, often invisible to the naked eye, are easily ingested by mussels, fish and other marine animals. On entering the food chain, they can pose major problems for the marine environment and, possibly, human health.
“We are damaging our environment, our food chain and our health in ways that we have not even begun to understand,” said Erik Solheim, Head of UN Environment. “But, as this extraordinary beach clean-up and the story behind it proves, each one of us has the power to turn that around. We can stop this menace at source, in our homes and on our beaches.”
What began as one lawyer’s desire to tackle the rising amount of litter in the world’s oceans has since grown into a movement of over 500 volunteers from all walks of life. From slum-dwellers and local fishermen to school children and Bollywood stars: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, the young and the elderly have joined forces to reclaim their beach.
They have laboured under the baking Indian sun for eight hours every weekend for the past 43 weeks. Using diggers, trucks and their bare hands, the volunteers have hauled, pulled and picked from the beach everything from condoms to sanitary pads, school bags to tobacco pouches. Most of the waste is made up of plastic bags and discarded pieces of clothing.
“It is the sheer quantity that is so disturbing: in some places it is shin deep,” said Shah. “But we treat all this litter as an opportunity: the beach acts as a net to catch the pollutants from the ocean. We grab this opportunity so that the plastic is not carried into the deep sea by ocean currents.”
Shah, who rallied residents and fishermen in the area by knocking on doors and explaining the damage marine litter causes, now plans to expand his group’s operation to prevent litter from washing down the local creek and onto the beach. He also wants to clean-up the coastline’s litter-choked mangrove forests, which act as a vital natural defence against storm surges, and to inspire similar groups across India and the rest of the world to launch their own clean-up movements.
He has already managed to inspire the renowned endurance swimmer and UN Patron of the Oceans, Lewis Pugh, who joined the volunteers in their heroic efforts last weekend.
“The biggest beach clean-up in history shows us that no challenge is insurmountable. If the people of Mumbai can clean this beach, just imagine what else can be done. I believe it could be a fantastic model for what can be achieved elsewhere in India, South East Asia, and globally,” said Pugh.
The movement Shah founded has not been without its share of grief. In March, Shah’s friend and co-founder of the Versova Resident Volunteers, the 84-year-old retired businessman Mathur, died from cancer. Mathur’s son broke with Hindu tradition by refusing to sprinkle his father’s ashes in the ocean he so deeply loved.
“His son said that his father wouldn’t want anything to go into the ocean that was not meant to be in it,” said Shah.
As the army of volunteers descended once more on Versova Beach to begin yet another weekend clean-up, the head of UN Environment paid tribute to the vision of two men who have worked tirelessly to reduce the amount of waste washed into the world’s oceans.
“Their efforts remind the rest of the world that even the most ambitious, global agreements are only as good as the individual action and determination that brings them to life,” said Solheim in a message to the volunteers. “Every single piece of rubbish you collect today will have an impact that reaches far beyond Versova.”
