First Step at Muththatti - Trip Report

Date : 26th Nov 2006

Place : Muththatti

Number of Volunteers that participated: 17

Trip Report: Yet another good cleaning drive by the “Clean & Green” team, with a good turnout on the volunteers’ front. Much Planning had to go into this trip primarily for 2 reasons 1) Good Number of Volunteers 2) It’s a new place that the team has adopted. With so many phone calls and mails hitting the inboxes finally the day had come for the team to visit Muththatti. Though the vehicles reached slightly late to the initial pick up point we managed to pick all the volunteers and were off to Kanakapura from banashankari by 6.45 Am. A short stopover at Kanakapura village for breakfast and then moved ahead towards the spot where we were destined for, reached the place well in time. At the very first glance it gave us an impression “this place is an awful mess”. This place is littered left right center and in magnitude of 50 times Sangama or Pearl Valley our previous cleaning spots. However the volunteers didn’t lose hope. Somewhere a beginning has to be made and we could clean whatever we can and clean little part of the stretch. The operation continued for more than an hour or so and soon we ran out of sacs. We tried compressing few of the sacs to create space and collected some more plastic. And finally we are done with the cleaning, all the 15 sacs were full but the very sight of the place doesn’t bring any smiles on the faces for the task undertaken. The place is littered so badly we might need the entire village to take up this initiative and make sure the public visiting maintain some decorum. After a pep talk by Sandeep we left to JL&R Bhemeswari for lunch. Few of them trekked to this place that is about 6kms from Muththatti while the rest left in the vehicle. We had a sumptuous lunch followed by discussion on what should be the future course of action. We took rest for more than an hour and left to Muththatti. We could see the place where we segregated the garbage bags were out of shape and it’s purely a monkey business. At the outset all of them were let down looking at the scene, however we rolled up our sleeves segregated the plastic and dumped into the JL&R vehicle, which came right on time. And then left for Bangalore on a good note. We reached Bangalore at about 7 pm. Though the task undertaken was minimal most of them feel it’s a good starting step to make a difference.

Learnings from the Trip:

• Regular visits to this place with good number at least 18.
• We should look at other alternatives along with cleaning drives – talk to the panchayat, educate the locals, involve them in the activity.
• Posters or Notice Boards need to be in strategic locations than hidden elsewhere.

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.

Amount of Plastic collected in volume: 15 bags with overall weight aggregating to 80-90 Kgs.

Sponsors: Jungle Lodges and Resorts sponsored Lunch. Garbage disposal from Muththatti to Kanakapura was sponsored by JLR. We would like to thank Ms. Jija Hari Sing MD JL&R for encouraging the group drive this kind of cleaning activities and Mr. Nahar Resident Manager of JL& R for his assured support to the C&G team for future trips also.

Other Expenditure (Food, water, Gloves, Garbage Bags, Sticks, Parking and Misc): This ran into Rs 3740/-

Expenses Shared By: Overall the expenses amounted to Rs.3740/ and were shared equally among the 17 volunteers who turned up for the trip. Essentially each individual who turned up for the trip contributed Rs.220/ for the Clean and Green program.

Volunteers in action:

Scene before the cleaning activity:

Scene after the activity: Garbage Being transported in JL&R vehicle.

Great Job folks...Keep Volunteering for a Good Cause - When you give something to the nature , mother earth will definitely reward you in some other form.

Until Next Activity....

Vijay K Yenne

for "Clean And Green"