http://epaper.heraldgoa.in/articlepage.php?articleid=OHERALDO_GOA_20230611_6_1&width=385px&edition=oHeraldo&curpage=6
Earlier this week on World Environment Day on June 5, the Goa government unveiled a new public art installation at Miramar that was explicitly intended to highlight the devastating impact of plastic wastes on our ecology, and inadvertently wound up also illustrating the scale and intractability of the problem. Not only was the ‘Plastic Palu’ – a menacing-looking giant fish sculpture – made out of single-use plastics, ostensibly to share an anti-pollution message, but so were the accompanying flags and some poorly edited signboards. Here, once again, as we now see so often in India’s smallest state, only lip service is being paid to an important issue, while directly adding to the problem, in the presumption that there will never be any accountability. “I am exhausted by plastic,” said Clinton Vaz at another, much more meaningful event this week, hosted on World Oceans Day on June 8 by the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s Goa office in Miramar, just down the road from the Plastic Palu. The 42-year-old has dedicated his entire adult life (starting at 19) to understanding and tackling the problem of garbage, and his company vRecycle now handles the waste of an impressive 45000 households from two processing facilities in the Margao industrial estate. But even as his capabilities grew exponentially over two decades, they were far outstripped by the severity of the crisis: “we are all doing much more than before, including the government, but we’re still overwhelmed. It feels like the majority of people just don’t care.” That sentiment is set to be tested, after the launch of WWF Goa’s easy-to-use Plastic Reporter WhatsApp chatbot, which aims to build a realistic snapshot of the plastic waste overwhelming Goa’s oceanfront. Via the telephone number +91 7498982409, everyone can now report, document and location-tag every instance of this kind of pollution, and we can begin to understand what it is, and where it comes from. Huge credit is due WWF Goa, and especially the outstanding programme co-ordinator Aditya Kakodkar. Since he took over the state outpost of this global organization, this talented 40-year-old Marine Science professional has led a series of excellent projects in different areas of study. Here's what the WWF says it wants to do: “The Chatbot offers a user-friendly platform for the general public to report the location, quantity, and images of beach litter. This data will help map the extent of unmanaged plastic waste in natural habitats and aid in identifying effective solutions. Utilising the widely accessible WhatsApp platform, individuals can contribute to the cause by simply sending a message 'plastic' to WWF's WhatsApp number - +917498982409. The Chatbot will guide participants through predefined questions to gather the necessary details.” The efforts are Konkan-specific, to “address the pressing issue of marine plastics generated by tourism activities in Goa and Southern Maharashtra. These regions, known for their pristine natural beauty, are faced with the challenge of protecting endangered marine species and vital habitats such as coral reefs.” And they are part of a broader campaign to conserve the most precious coastal habitats: “The growth of nature tourism, including coral reef scuba diving and dolphin watching, has brought increased plastic pollution to these fragile ecosystems. Recognising the urgent need for intervention, apart from the chatbot, WWF-India is also working closely with dive and dolphin tour operators to implement effective plastic waste management strategies. The operators will be provided training to ensure proper management and disposal of plastics on-board and on jetties. Moreover, they will be encouraged to participate actively in reef clean-up activities and responsible disposal of plastic waste. Local Goa and Southern Maharashtra stakeholders will collaborate to establish and strengthen a reliable plastic management system.” All this is already underway, in an invaluable intervention from WWF Goa, but it does beg the question why the Goa government isn’t doing anything like it, and instead insulting the intelligence of its citizens with dreck like the Plastic Palu. Meanwhile, from a standing start in the middle of the pandemic, when the coastlines cleared almost completely from plastic pollution, the state has become inundated with garbage, quite possibly past the point of any redemption. On that same World Oceans Day earlier this week, 100 scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography at Dona Paula spent a few hours cleaning up just 1km of sands at Caranzalem, and collected an astonishing 185 kg of plastic, plus another 40kg of glass, and another 15-20kg of household waste. Multiply by 131 kilometres of beachfront, and hundreds more upriver. What I really appreciated about the launch event of the WWF Goa plastic chatbot was the ebullient blend of pragmatism and ideals shared in various measure by all three of the main discussants: Sanjiv Khandelwal of Sensible Earth (the Salvador do Mundo-based organization behind the excellent zero-waste grocery EcoPosro and the #MakaNakaPlastic campaign), Abhinav Apte of ComePostVille (which its website describes as “an initiative to build purpose driven communities where people share knowledge & skills, enable and encourage positive actions, build on experiences and growing together towards sustainability”) and the OG of Goa garbage mavens, the aforementioned Vaz. Further plain-speaking clarity came from the chief guest, Dr. Pradeep Sarmokadam, who is member secretary of the Goa State Biodiversity Board. None of these four veterans of doing the dirty work spent any time in self-congratulation – indeed, the former entrepreneur in the plastics space Khandelwal said with real feeling that “sustainability has ruined my life” – but each expressed and embodied the idea that good things can be done, in the powerful Gandhian idiom of “be the change”. Later, I was surprised and pleased to see almost that exact sentiment on the ComePostVille website: “If we wait for the government, it will be too late, if we act as individuals it will be too less, if we act as communities, it might just be enough” -- This quote by Rob Hopkins nicely explains the philosophy of what we are trying to do.”
