Wednesday, July 13, 2011

IBM Centenary Celebrations - Involves Clean and Green

Date: 15th June 2011


Place: Muthathi

Number of Volunteers: 27



IBM celebrated its centennial year on June 15th, 2010. As part of the centennial celebration IBM actively encouraged its employees to give back to community by getting involved social projects, this initiative is called “Celebration of Service”.

We (IBM Rational CCM team) as part of IBM’s “Celebration of Service” project got in touch with Sandeep and Roopa and chalked out a plan for a clean drive on June 15th, 2011.

Thanks to Sandeep and Roopa’s encouraging words and helping us in all possible ways.



The team with 27 exuberant folks kicked off from IBM, EGL campus at 7:00 AM on a shuttle. En route to Muthathi, game of “Antakshari” kept everyone animated. The team stopped 30 mins for breakfast at a Darshini, 3 kms before Art of Living. After the pleasing breakfast, we got into shuttle and reached Muthathi around 10:15 AM.

Jungle Lodges staff was waiting for our arrival; confirmed the volunteer count and placed lunch order for the same.

After a brief by Kamal and Vivek (the co-coordinators ) to bustling volunteers about the Clean and Green project and clean-up plan, volunteers geared with rakes, gloves and gunny bags formed teams and went on scouting spree at 10:30 AM.



The teams segregated plastic at source, i.e. each volunteer were collecting either composite plastics (gutka/biscuit/chips wrappers etc) or regular plastics (carry bags, plastic bottles/cups/plates etc). We also segregated glass bottles as we felt it could harm tourists if in case it’s broken. We saw loads of paper wastes strewn around and one of the volunteers rightly asked why don’t we collect them as well and drop in the dustbins. We all felt it’s a wise idea and started collecting paper wastes as well and dumped in dustbins.

Few kids from near by villages were inquisitive about our actions and it was pleasing to see them doing their bit by collecting the wastes

At 12:45 PM we stopped collecting and started crushing and sewing the gunny bags. 28 bags of wastes were collected, which roughly could have weighed around 75 – 80 Kgs.

At 1:30 PM we boarded the bus and headed towards serene Galibore fishing camp for much needed lunch provided by the JLR at subsidized rates. After a scrumptious, the team took rest for 15 mins and later unwound by playing Lagori :)

The team left Galibore fishing camp at 4:30 PM and en route was super excited to see JLR jeeps carrying the collected wastes. Seeing things happening adds lot of value than hearing it, at this moment everyone felt happy that we have done our bit to the community.

Kinds of Plastic Collected: Water Bottles, Toffee Wrappers, Ghutka Wrappers and other variants of it, Ice-Cream cups, plates, food content wrappers, soft drink bottles, soft drink cups etc.


Amount of Plastic collected in volume: 75 - 80 Kg of plastic !!!!



Sponsors: The trip was sponsored by exuberant volunteers.



Suggestions by IBM team:

As cleaning is not a long term solution, the team wants to help in grass root level by:

Sponsoring dustbins and Sponsoring notice board




Thanks Clean and Green & JLR for your support and effort in making plastic free tourism place

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