Sweeping change

ENVIRONMENT: Every Sunday, small children in Kolkata show how to move mountains - of filth.

On each of the last three Sundays, 30 school children aged between six and 16 have cleared 725 kilograms of litter — yes, you read it right — from the parks and lanes of South Avenue, a long boulevard stretch in Kolkata. This Sunday, their target is to clear a round figure of a tonne.

So far, the children have covered 220 metres. The money spent on the project— the Save Southern Avenue Project — is a grand Rs 850, with which they have bought surgical gloves and other things for safety.

Litter, as defined by the project, means plastic and paper waste, though the team has also picked up Nike shoes, soles, and gutkha pouches.

The organisers of the initiative are Mudar Patherya, primarily an annual report consultant and director, Trisys, and Armaan Sood, a Class XII student of St James’ School, Kolkata.

“It is very strategic, when you do it with adults, there will be resistance,” says Patherya, who first got in touch with Sood’s mother, who runs a tuition class for 45 students. And word spread like garbage fire.

The initiative saw participation from the nature clubs of La Martiniere School (girls and boys), and children from South Avenue and elsewhere.

“It is completely voluntary,” says Sood. The total area the project would cover is about three kilometres, from Gol Park to SP Mukherjee Road via Southern Avenue and Abdul Resul Avenue.

Yet, the feeling is, “So little done, so much to do.” According to Patherya, the initiative was made possible by good old networking. Those in the net include the Kolkata Municipal Corporation sweepers, who help with the disposal. Patherya has them on his mobile.

There is help from different quarters. The owner of a jute unit has donated 50 hessian bags to take care of the waste. That’s not surprising, since curbing plastic usage is a favourite subject for jute mill owners.

Procedures have been put in place for the litter collection exercise: Weigh all the waste collected, keep a log, announce running score, and celebrate landmark collections.

According to Sood, the “world record” so far is 19 kg in one bag. “If you don’t make it a game for the kids, they will not be interested,” said Patherya.

But things are poised to get a little more daunting. Every year at the beginning of April, the Nor’wester, or the north-westerly storm, uproots trees, whose roots have become loose, along Southern Avenue. “There is nothing to hold on to. The subsoil has layers of plastic,” says Patherya.

The team is against large-scale publicity, though. The next step is to network with building secretaries and representatives. The communication methods are new-age, in sync with the age group of the volunteers. There is already a blog spot called Save Southern Avenue 2009.

Though focused on the strip of Southern Avenue, the project has an eye on the big picture. The vision is to become ambassadors who take this programme to other neighbourhoods and help change the city.

Next week, the team plans to meet the mayor of Kolkata to apprise him of the initiative. “We need to start small. This will take a number of months; we will not disappear. We want to start small, but sustain it,” says Patherya. And that’s not a load of rubbish.