Activists clean up river, seek serious attention towards issue
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The organization, Wild On Wheels had arranged for a River Bank Clean Up event at Deccan on March 14. This event was organised to symbolise the start of fund-raiser. This organisation wishes to address the need for serious concern towards the environment.
The initiator of this movement Apoorva Joshi said, "We are students of Environmental Science and Biotechnology from FC College. We aim at working on wildlife documentation and wildlife protection. We have started on small note but it was really surprising that in span of two hours, we collected 21 bags of garbage. People should think seriously about this."
Adding further her friend Chaitrali Ranade said, "We had established this NGO Wild On Wheels two years ago. We have collected garbage from the banks of river which included plastic, medical waste, vegetables waste, worn out clothes, flowers and garlands. Actually we have garbage bin on Bhide Bridge but it is overflowing and PMC does not even bother to clean up resulting in water pollution. We had contacted Ghole Road ward office for this and they had supported us."
Amit Ambedkar of Hingewadi-based Balson Industries sponsored the bio-degradable bags for collection of garbage. In noble gesture, a young boy Zakir Hussain came up with gloves to support this initiative. Around 20 of them participated in it. Also some passersby who saw this movement joined the group wholeheartedly. Apart from this, members also urged the people not to throw paper and plastic in river.
Apoorva said, "Any kind of bio-degradable matter that is dumped into water bodies decays due to the action of micro-organisms present in the water. These organisms require oxygen for these processes to occur. However, when excess of organic matter is dumped in the water bodies, the rate of degradation decreases and most of the available oxygen is used by the microbes to decay the dumped waste. When so much oxygen is used by microbes, the other organisms in the water body, like fish, or aquatic plants and insects, get less oxygen for their survival. Hence, the biological oxygen demand of that water body increases. When the demand reaches a certain level, the water is unhealthy. And only anaerobic organisms which do not require oxygen can survive in such water. This changed basic chemistry and biology of the water body affecting all living organisms that depend on this water." Those interested can contact on wildonwheelspune@gmail.com.
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