Bhubaneswar: On seeing a beach littered with plastics, most of the visitors would not pay heed to the filth around. But, 22-year-old Rahul Maharana—who works as a security guard in Odisha’s Bhubaneswar—would immediately pick them up and stack them inside a gunny bag. He feels it is his duty to keep the beaches clean and free them of plastic pollution.
Perturbed by the sight of the shore lined with all kinds of litter, Rahul decided to launch his beach cleaning mission in 2018, while he was still studying. “When I started beach cleaning, I had no idea about plastic pollution. The sight of filth irritated me. And, that’s why I decided to clean the beach near my village all by myself,” said Rahul, who has been cleaning the Astaranga beach for the past four years.
Later, he attended an awareness programme on beach cleaning by Soumya Ranjan Biswal in his college. “The awareness programme helped me learn about the menace of plastic pollution. I learnt about the threat plastic poses to the endangered Olive Ridley turtles during their nesting season. Thus, I took it up as a mission to reduce plastic pollution on the beaches,” he said.
Every month, Rahul sets a target for himself. “I decide about the quantity of plastic I would collect from the beaches. This helps me to estimate the time required. In a month, I clean the Astaranga beach once or twice when I visit my village,” he said.
Not just that, Rahul also takes unpaid leaves of about one to two months in a year to completely dedicate his time to the cause. Before the nesting season of Olive Ridley Turtles, he takes special leaves from his job—even if it amounts to a salary deduction—to clean the Rushikulya beach.
Rahul has undertaken beach cleaning initiatives more than 70 times so far. On each trip, he would bring back at least 10 to 15 bags of plastic waste. “I have gathered at least 500 bags of waste so far. I had contacted the local civic administration at Konark for disposal of the same. But, I got little help from them. So, I identified two spots where I bury the waste under soil or sand,” said Rahul, who has preserved a few bottles that he believed had washed up on the Astranga beach from Japan or Indonesia.
For most people in his village, his work is ‘irrelevant.’ “At times, I am laughed at in my village. They feel it is a futile exercise. Some even doubt if I earn money out of it. It is difficult to make them understand why I do this, but I have not given up hope. I still try to encourage the villagers to clean the beaches,” he added.
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