Environmentalist From Gujarat Collected 700 Kgs Of Waste From Water Bodies

Sneha Shahi was a Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda MA Environmental Studies student joined the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) plastic tide turner challenge. She joined it with 300 other students from her college and was eventually chosen as one of the 18 participants for the campaign in 2019. Plastic was collected from the urban streams of river in an excess amount of 700kg.

The UK Government's Environment, Food and Agriculture Department supports and funds UNEP's Tide Turner Plastic Challenge Badge. According to the UNEP website, the UNEP launched a clean sea campaign to educate people about plastic pollution and encourage them to engage in the campaign.

Environmental Protection Sneha and a few students from her campus joined the movement to help safeguard the environment, but they never imagined they would be able to restore the living ecosystem. During the campaign, they had to deal with a lot of changes.

They made the decision to clean up a polluted river near their institution. Plastic garbage has accumulated in the river since long and had turned out the river body to a unclean and toxic water body. As cleaning up the plastic garbage was such a large effort, students volunteered to clean up the plastic debris on campus.

While cleaning the Urban river, they collected a variety of trash, including Thermocol, Microplastics, and glass bottles. People persuaded it the most difficult task they had was persuading people not to toss garbage in public locations, which caused significant damage to water bodies and land. "They also called and termed the campaign of cleaning the rivers as "Bhukhi Stream Project". The project was further nominated for the Youth for Earth Award," reported The Logical Indian.

Sneha noticed changes in employees after a few months of the programme, and they began to work more constructively. She was overjoyed to have been the first to do so, and she is pleased to see everyone appreciating nature and following the rules correctly.

Plastic garbage and its careless disposal have a negative impact on the environment's flora and wildlife. The amount of plastic discarded has foretold the future, and people should take action to decrease their use of plastic.