Mumbai: Around 4000 cigarettes buds were collected at Juhu beach on Sunday as part of a beach clean up activity carried out by Mission Green Mumbai (MGM) group. Surprisingly, these buds were collected from an area of only 100 meters and within one hour long clean up drive. It was collected by a group of 100 students from SST College, Ulhasnagar in association with MGM group.
“Our group collects garbage from Juhu beach every weekend from an area of 1 km. On the occasion of World Cancer Day, we decided to collect only cigarette buds from the garbage. To create awareness hundred college students joined us. It was shocking that we collected 4000 cigarette buds from an area of 100 meters”, said Subhajit Mukherjee, founder of MGM.
“We collect garbage every weekend and hand it over to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for proper management. However, seeing the high number of cigarette buds in the garbage, we want to urge Mumbaikars to not make beaches their smoking destination. Smoking is injurious to health and the buds mixed with sea water damages marine life too,” Mukherjee added.
He further said that the BMC has been helpful with their initiative. The condition of the beaches in the city has changed while making the citizens aware.
BMC on the other hand has appointed contractors for cleaning of Juhu, Versova, Chimbai and Waringpada beach while the contract for cleaning Dadar and Mahim beach will start from April 2019. The annual contract for the beach cleaning is Rs 11 crore.
