They went to ROB!

AKHILA P. R. JANANI GANESAN. The Hindu. 4th February, 2010.

CAMPAIGN Hundreds flocked to the Elliots Beach to passionately perform the mundane — cleaning up trash!

“Chennai's sandy beaches, everyone loves it; nobody cares” was the tagline on the poster that attracted many eyes. A concert by Junkyard Groove, press conferences, talks in schools and colleges, stalls at college culturals, posters, sms campaigns and, of course, Reclaim our Beaches (ROB's) website drew people to the ‘Right Beach Clean Up' at Elliots Beach on Jan 30. The next day was a day of celebrations that included football and cricket matches (a nod to the ban on the Marina), essay-writing and painting contests, ‘fishing for plastics',thakli-making and composting aimed to capture the essence of the beach…

Everybody's responsibility

No one owns the beach. It is everyone's: the walkers, the hawkers, the fisherman whose home and office the beach is and the lovers whose base it is; the children whose playground it is and the elderly whose haven it is. Ice-creams, candy, kites, rides, peanuts, bajji — all of this and more make the beach what it is. The way to a clean beach is not elimination of any of these factors, it is elimination of the trash they generate.

The day of Right Clean Up dawned cool and clear. At 6:15 a.m., participants rolled up. A slew of college students followed by enthusiastic adults (the age group was quite literally 7-70!) and school children lined up at the registration desk and waited eagerly for the Clean Up to start. It was startling to witness a passion for what is so often regarded as a boring necessity: clearing trash! Blue Garbage bags, rakes and gloves were passed around along with dollops of enthusiasm. The beach was divided into eight sections and each section was allotted its own group. Barely half an hour into the clean up, about 200 people were on the beach. Much to everyone's surprise, Neel Metal Fanalca workers, who had been intimated of the clean up, rolled up in a tempo and asked where they should begin. The energy, laughter, fun and responsibility that filled the air were an amazing blend to come by. Instead of leaving as the sun came out, more people thronged the beach.

Cleaner minds

But should Beach Clean Ups be a regular feature? ROB's policy is: Cleaning up is good, but learn how NOT to litter at all. This is the idea that ROB wants to spread among the public. Whereas most Beach Clean-Ups see a clean beach at the end, ROB sees a sea of clean minds at the end of their campaign, of which this weekend was a milestone, not the destination.

And to highlight this, they had a Beach Fest on Jan 31 with a two-fold message: See how good a clean beach feels? And let's learn how not to mess it up so we don't have to spend another day cleaning it up. The ROB Beach Fest wound up with a prize distribution and cultural programme at SPACES.

The number of people this weekend touched was astounding. The number of people who responded to the call for a responsible public was heartening. With more outreach, more people being touched every day, perhaps it won't be long before ROB's posters read: Chennai's Sandy Beaches: Everyone Loves them, Everyone Cares.

What we found…

- The clean-up lasted about three-and-a-half hours.

- More than 600 people managed to fill 200 bags of trash! Imagine 200 bags of trash lying around on your beach.

- The Broken Bridge yielded an entire 30-foot long dumpster worth of garbage, not to mention 50 bags of styrofoam and used slippers that were set aside to construct a monument in the middle of the Beach.

The ROB attitude

Reclaim Our Beaches, aka ROB, is a community gathering which set out, about four months ago, to do just what the name implies — reclaim our democracy through reclaiming our public spaces, starting with the beach. They believe that the beach is unfortunately one of the few places where people from all sections of the society can gather to have some fun and enjoy rare commodities such as clean air, without having to pay for it! But with the way things are headed, the ROBers feel this would cease to be the case before long, what with us chasing away the Olive Ridley turtles with plastic waste and the authorities trying to ‘ beautify' the beach with fancy expressways that would displace livelihoods and habitats. The beach is ours and so is the responsibility to keep it clean, is the ROBers attitude Website: www.letsrob.org.

Akhila is a student of WCC and Janani is a III year B.A. Economics student at Stella Maris College.

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