This was evident throughout a three-four-hour consciousness and cleansing drive organized by the Kochi chapter of the Ocean Society of India (OSI)–a discussion board of researchers, scientists, academicians, college students and NGOs engaged on oceans and marine setting within the state.
“The degrees of plastic current within the coasts are alarming. Even in locations like Fort Kochi, the place cleansing is finished recurrently by some volunteer group or the opposite, round 150kg plastic was collected. Similar is the case of locations like Alappuzha, Kollam or Varkala. In many of the seashores, plastic remnants from micro-plastic to macro-plastic have been seen,” mentioned Prof KV Jayachandran, chairman Ocean Society of India, Cochin chapter.
The OSI had coordinated an consciousness and cleansing programme “Keep away from Plastic, Save Ocean” within the 9 coastal districts within the state with assist of varied scientific, academic establishments and NGOs. “Once we deliberate it, we requested the volunteers to wash and dry the waste and hand it over to the Harithakarma Sena within the respective locations,” he mentioned.
A Whole of 1,163 members joined the drive and cleaned up small stretches from 500m to 1km through which they discovered large volumes of microplastics too, indicating that they’ve been mendacity there for fairly a protracted interval. They coated round 7.2km of seashore areas within the 9 districts and picked up 64 totally different gadgets. “In all, we collected 2,549kg plastic. This requires a significant motion plan involving numerous stakeholders,” mentioned Jayachandran, who coordinated the programme with help from Nationwide Centre for Coastal Analysis, Chennai.
They mentioned that plastic accumulation within the Arabian Sea off Kerala coast is thru run-offs in rivers and its ramified community throughout the terrain of the state.