Mumbai: 17 tonnes of garbage cleaned in mega drive at Aarey Milk Colony

The Mega Clean-up Drive saw 30 trucks filled with the garbage

The Mega Clean-up Drive at Aarey Milk Colony on Sunday cleared 17 metric tonnes of garbage via 30 trucks in three hours. In the coming days more such drives are expected to be undertaken. It is for the first time that government agencies including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC - Solid Waste Management); Aarey Dairy; Forest Department; the NGO Empower Foundation and citizens came together for a clean-up drive in Aarey Colony.

The drive was flagged off by MLA and ex-minister Ravindra Waikar along with Rajendra Pawar, CEO, Aarey Dairy; Santosh Dhonde, assistant commissioner, BMC; Subhash Dalvi, OSD for Solid Waste Management; Rakesh Bhoir, RFO, Forest Department; and Dr Jalpesh Mehta, founder chairperson, Empower Foundation.

On Sunday six JCBs, five Taurus, eight Dumpers and more than 180 staff of the BMC participated in the drive, which was one of the largest clean-up drives in Mumbai.

Report that started it

After the recent leopard attacks in Aarey, the Empower Foundation, a Mumbai-based wildlife conservation organisation, had submitted an analytical report to the government of Maharashtra titled ‘Root cause analysis of recent Leopard-Human conflicts in Aarey Forest: Garbage.' The report not only showed the link of garbage to the leopard attacks, forest fires and encroachments, it also had pictures and details of 56 locations with GPS details like latitude and longitude which were related to nine leopard-human conflicts in three months (Aug-Oct 2021).

In January 2022, Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray convened a meeting where matters related to Aarey including the garbage issue were discussed. Following the same, on January 20, all the stakeholders met in Aarey to address the issue. The nuances of the analytical report covering 56 sensitive garbage spots linked to forest fires and leopard attacks were presented by Dr Mehta. Girija Desai, ACF, Forest Department urged sustainable garbage management (garbage segregation, etc.) across all the 27 tribal padas, besides having signages and speed breakers inside Aarey.

Aim is garbage-free Aarey

MLA Waikar, Aarey Dairy CEO, Forest and NGO teams visited seven large spots which are on the verge of becoming large garbage landfills and monitored the drive. Waikar announced that the drive would continue for the next few weeks with the objective of making Aarey garbage free and to have sustainable garbage management across the 27 tribal padas, tabelas.

"This first-ever Mega Clean-up Drive bringing together all the government authorities and citizen groups and environment lovers on common ground will go a long way in keeping Aarey clean. We have mapped six areas in Aarey with our volunteers and the BMC team for better coordination to clean up the remaining spots. The need is now to make the efforts sustainable and all the agencies working together can make this possible," said Dr Mehta.