Sep 19: International Coastal Clean Up
– Cris
TidyCity tied up with WWF to do a clean up of Shanghumugham beach today.
On the occasion of International Coastal Clean Up Day, members of TidyCity clubbed with WWF in their event of a clean-up drive. This was followed by a segregation exercise and finally the count of the different objects collected was noted.
Starting a little after 7 am, the team was divided into a single line to cover a stretch of around 100 metres in an hour’s time. Instructions were given to collect every little thing from a tiny piece of paper, to cigarette snubs to huge plastic sheets. The items mostly picked were plastic spoons, icecream sticks and covers, plastic covers, cigarette snubs, plastic covers and wrappers, thermocol, and even clothe.
After segregration the WWF team noted the numbers so it can be used to survey what contributes to the garbage at beaches. TidyCity would also be giving out the numbers soon.
Apart from the exercise, we saw jelly fish remains, fishermen pulling nets, and ticket collectors. Srijith was affectionately called ‘njanjool’ (small worm) by one of them, which TidyCity decided to accept as his TidyCity name.
Sivakumar Sir from WWF treated us to coffee and snacks at the Indian Coffee House afterwards.
TC members who attended: Srijith, Manu, Rasika, Bindu, Ashith, Aneesh, Anil, Joji, Swapin, Cris
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May 2: Plastic pick-up from Zoo
And now the zoo venture ladies and gentlemen. It was a Saturday. Yeah for technical reasons we decided to make it Saturday this time. For the same technical reasons, we may change it back to Sundays from next time.
A few statistics before we start. Attendance: Very low: 8
Results: Very low: 2 funny comments.
Now about the day. The plan was to pick up anything that looked like plastic and dump it into our [sigh] last few trash bags. ‘An brothers’ Aneesh and Anil got us the permissions we’d need. So the entry was free.
Conceicao and her mom Bernadete were the surprise package we had – two Brazilians who enthusiastically joined us and picked up every little piece of plastic they saw.
Now certain volunteers confused the children who were visiting to see animals. So the kids ended up pointing at An bro 1 and saying “twee twee kurange kurange, kaattu kurange (here monkey monkey, forest monkey)”. Our leech killer An bro 1 became the monkey impersonator this time.
Srijith found the maximum number of plastic bottles. Two Tamil ladies kept asking An bro 1 about how he was going to sell this collection and make money. He said something and they laughed. No wonder – he tried Tamil. Ms Cris arrived at this point and used her expertise in Tamil to save the day – “no Aneesh was not a kid who was trying to run away with all the plastic and sell it. He was a volunteer cleaning up the zoo of its plastic to pass a message”. I am sure they understood it all.
We winded up soon and ended up as usual at the apple juice counter. That’s exactly the point when Ashith arrived, right on time for his 5:55 pm snacks (I hear he takes the next one as late as 5:58 pm). Conceicao kindly bought us all mango juice. Her mom took a lot of snaps all the way and was quite happy to be a part of it all. We talked with her and learnt about the stuff that she does. She is a social worker and also an art teacher. She visits so many places, and tries to learn about how things work there. She said good words about Trivandum.
All done we dumped our waste at the trash bins, not having too many other choices. Next was a brilliant plan suggested by, emm, well someone from the group, to see a brilliant movie. So 5 of us – Aneesh, Srijith, Ashith, moi and Manu went to see this Tamil movie called ‘Pataalam’. Aneesh seemed to be all smiles – now those who don’t know him may think he is clenching his teeth – but I am sure it’s a nice smile to thank the nice person who suggested this nice movie to him. Ashith took off every 10 minutes because he was finding the emotional content too hard to bear. Poor kid, he had his eyes red and his face moist. Manu seemed to be learning directorial techniques all the while. Srijith remained a quiet spectator, appreciating the beauty of it all in silence.
And that’s it folks. Another Tidy-Day over, but am afraid with few results. Nevertheless, we wont stop trying. So rake your heads and write in the forum about what we do next! Hurry!
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April 19th – Shankhumukham
– by Vidya Gopalakrishnan (Vids)
Buahahahahaha!! I feel like blogging!!! 
[Which means it's not gonna be to-the-point! 
]
This Sunday, I knew that Cris wouldn’t be able to make it since she had to go to her office. I had to wake her up from her Saturday morning slumber to find out that, sorry!!!
has this habit of freaking me out, telling me to take charge of things when she has to stay away from TidyCity activities due to office-work! And Aneesh has this habit of telling everyone that I am in charge of things and then asking ME what has to be done next, when Cris is missing! And I have the habit of talking in my highest pitch when Cris says something that vaguely translated means, I have to take charge! 
hehe! Till now, I have been saved by the presence of a member who CAN take charge of things! And this time when I broke into the “high-pitch”, she calmed me down by saying that Nithin will be there and all I have to do is to BE there!
Anyway, I reached Shankhumukham and waited near the park to spot any fellow TidyCity-ians who might have reached there. I didn’t know who all were coming, except Nithin and Sreenath. Sreenath had called me from Medical College, asking which bus he was supposed to take to reach Shankhumukham, and I having gone to Medical College less than 10 times (one for my birth, 22 years back ) wasn’t sure that I was giving the right directions! So I knew that, if at all he makes it, it’s gonna be a miracle!
But I saw Srijith some time later, standing a long way in front of my car. But by the time I took my things and got there, he was missing! I had been informed earlier by him that he won’t be coming, so I seriously doubted whether it was just my imagination! But he again emerged out from some stone-house kind of thing, and on reaching there, I saw the other members:
’s house to get the placards.
After distributing the badges, we moved to the beach area where we planned to fill the bottles with sand, making it heavier for the wind to blow them away. I must not forget to mention the discussion we had over filling the bottles whether with water or sand! hehe!!! Bindu opted water and Aneesh opted sand! Anil said that we must fill alternate ones with sand and water and I said that we should fill each bottle with halfway sand and halfway water, of course, we were not helping!
After we filled the bottles (with sand alone!!) we decided that we should arrange the bottles to say “NO PLASTIC” and also to incorporate a skull and crossbones (which was only a vague idea until Arun sculpted it marvelously out of sand! 
) We did a test run on a somewhat deserted side of the beach! We didn’t know whether there were enough bottles to spell it out. But it seemed like we had more than enough! I said that we could photograph the test run and then refer the photo while doing the actual one! I thought it was a pretty good idea, but suddenly everyone started laughing! 
Meanwhile, Nithin
and Sreenath made it there as well! Some people had already become curious during the test run!
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Anyway, we moved to a hilly side of the beach where we planned to do the actual work. It came out really well, and it looked impressive too! (I will put up the pics soon. Right now, I can’t upload them as my card reader is not working 
) Kudos to the guys for doing such a good job! We kept the Powerpoint presentation running in the laptop continuously in front of our bottle display. Children kept playing near the display and when they were becoming a serious threat to it , Aneesh went and sat uphill to guard it!!!
People started coming and asking questions to us, a few of them signed up to join. And some of them were given awareness by Bindu regarding the ill-effects of burning plastic. There was a family which said that they were trying their most to avoid plastic by taking big-shoppers along for shopping and disposed plastic by burying them in the ground. The response was quite nice, really better than what we’ve had till now Nithin was jotting down email ids and phone numbers in his diary, and Srijith was doing the same in his mobile. It seemed like we’ve successfully passed the message to at least a few people out there. I’m glad that we did this, I’m sure everyone is.
This method of awareness seemed to yield better results than our usual clean-ups, maybe it’s because we provided lots of things for people to see and wonder, and thereby, lure them! This time, we were out there and reachable to the people too. We should have had better planning and better materials, but there is always a next time to correct mistakes. This proved to be a success, and I must tell you, I felt this as the most satisying work we’ve done, though I think it’s partly because we didn’t have any activities for the past two weeks! hehehe!!!
And thanks a lot to Siva for dropping Aneesh, Bindu and me The Tattooist ipod in our respective homes!
March 15th, 2009 : Street Clean-up
– by Vidya Gopalakrishnan (Vids)
Today, I reached a bit late! Well.. bit means, it started at 4:30pm and I reached at 4:50pm! Normally I’m not that good with time though I have been getting the feeling from morning itself that I am gonna be late! I don’t know what time everybody got there at, or what everyone was doing till then. Srijith asked me whether I had brought the badges and while I was giving it to him, he mentioned that Cris had come. Well, this came as a surprise since she had told me the previous day that she cannot make it!
The number was 20 for this meeting. Everyone got their badges and gloves on, picked up tongs and sacks and started the cleaning-up process. The street in front of Bindu’s house offered a lot of plastic waste and a disturbingly large amount of broken glass pieces. A whole sack was full of the glass pieces and we stopped filling it when the sack started tearing!
There was one woman who asked us what we were doing, and Cris explained Tidy City’s objectives to her. Her fascinating reply was, “What is the use of us doing it for just one day? Tomorrow the same thing is going to happen!!”
And I shouldn’t probably forget to mention what an old woman asked us! I’m a bit dishonored to say this but anyway, she asked us whether we take bottles because she apparently has a lot of bottles in her house that needs to be cleared! 
Well I have asked Srijith not to wear that dress he wore today anymore for Tidy City’s programmes!
But there were two guys who, although were genuinely interested to join, also addressed their displeasure towards our seemingly non-cooperative attitude and exclusive membership. But after talking to them, they were so ready to join! But comments like “All you need is gloves, and we can join you, right?” and “What can we pick today? You have picked every paper on this street” did bother me. But with 8 sacks full of rubbish around them, they had every right to ask that question! Anyway, they gave us a useful advice: that we are involuntarily carrying a wrong attitude that might stop people from approaching us.
Bindu came a bit later asking someone to volunteer to go and talk to somebody who was burning plastic nearby. Well everyone went. Everyone, except me, who was stuck writing “Don’t throw away plastic on the road” and “Don’t throw away glass pieces on the road” on a piece of paper, in Malayalam, that was to be pinned to the sacks. Someone has to comment on how the talking went!
We met another person, a faculty member of SMV school, who said that he can help us by getting the participation of school students in the Tidy City activities, and not just his school, but many other schools in Trivandrum!
After taking the sacks to the place where it’ll be collected by the corporation vehicle, we came back to Bindu’s house, tidied ourselves and had a little discussion along with refreshments. The discussion was about Tidy City’s next venue and we also charted some future plans. At about 7:30, we winded up to return home. As always, this was the end of another glorious day in Tidy City’s calendar! New Nightmare film
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My first clean up: Shanghumugham – Ken
– by Ken John, on March 1 clean up at Shanghumugham beach
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The location chosen for the day’s clean up was Shangumugham Beach. Even though it was my first day with “tidycity” didn’t feel like it. Before the “official” clean-up started, all of us gathered behind the mermaid statue. We decided to have a clean up for an hour. The necessary arsenals were given to all and we dispersed in different directions.
Looking at the beach, the task of cleaning it up seemed quite daunting. Stepping into the beach and getting our hands dirty ensured that it wasn’t just a feeling, cleaning up the beach was a Herculean task. The shear size of the place was one of the main factors. Another factor was that there was too much garbage. Even if one cleans an area once, after a few minutes one would see garbage popping out from under the sand. The hot and humid conditions didn’t make things any easier for us.
Despite the various catcalls and stares, people stuck to their task and went about doing their jobs not getting bogged down. Many curious onlookers asked many volunteers about our cause. Considering the fact that we had less than 20 volunteers, we did a pretty good job. We definitely reduced the garbage in the sands of Shangumugham by at least 20 kg, which is not much but its a start.
The positives that came out of the session are many. All of us really understood the magnitude of the problem; even though we all knew it was big we realized that it’s much bigger. Our clean-up was noticed by scores of people and hopefully, would have made an impact on a large number of them. At least a few of them would think twice before littering. A drawback which was pointed out by one of the volunteers was that all of us had split too far away from each other. It would have been much more effective if we were all together and cleaned up a particular area instead of spanning across the entire beach. It’s a new experience for all of us and hence each time we come out of it wiser.
After the clean up Mr. Shibu gave us his views on the various issues related to garbage disposal. He talked from his personal experiences, the various innovative steps that he was a part of for making a change, from sending 2000 pet bottles to Pepsi, to spreading information via postcards. He shed light on the plight of the various landfills in India and how it affects the people living in the region. We were also informed about the politics behind recycling and the big bad plastic lobby. Issues regarding electronic waste, trash that gets dumped in Kerala from other countries, were touched upon. He emphasized on the importance of a change in mindset of people and on the fact that what a few people do becomes the trend of the place. The talk was very informative and gave all of us new insight.
Even though I just joined I am taking the liberty to tell what I think about our organization. It’s definitely a good start, a good initiative that can go a long way in the betterment of Trivandrum and may be, soon enough, all of Kerala. I feel that we need to have a lot more clarity. We should have well defined tangible goals and we should know how to achieve these goals. Like what Mr Shibu said, is clean up really the need of the hour? With the forum coming up and with future meetings a lot of these issues can be sorted out.
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