Volunteers have removed an astonishing 12 million kilograms (nearly 12,000 tons) of plastic from a short stretch of a Mumbai beach.
But their efforts will be in vain unless the city authorities improve waste collection and dissuade people living in slums from using a creek as a rubbish dump.
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Inspired bylawyer Afroz Sha h
Mr Shah helped to launch Sky Ocean Rescue a year ago. Since then, Bollywood stars have donated diggers and tractors to help dig up plastic buried beneath the sand.
"This beach laps the plastic up," he said. "It acts like a net. You must pick it up or the next high tide will take it out and it will never come back. Then it harms marine life."
The beach had been waist-height in plastic, but lovers now stroll through the surf and children play cricket in the sand.
Localschoolchildren clean-up Titiksha
"If we don't want our generation to face the problem of plastic we have to come here and clean it up."
But just a short distance away, Sky News walkedon
The plastic was swept down a creek that runs from the city to the Arabian Sea.
Mr Shah has now identified riverside slums that are the source of the plastic. He took Sky News to one slum, home to 5,000 people.
The residents are largely migrants from other regions of India and their needs are ignored by the authorities, said Mr Shah.
"There is no garbage pick up here. Nobody tells them how to handle plastic," he said.
But their efforts will be in vain unless the city authorities improve waste collection and dissuade people living in slums from using a creek as a rubbish dump.
Every
Inspired by
Mr Shah helped to launch Sky Ocean Rescue a year ago. Since then, Bollywood stars have donated diggers and tractors to help dig up plastic buried beneath the sand.
"This beach laps the plastic up," he said. "It acts like a net. You must pick it up or the next high tide will take it out and it will never come back. Then it harms marine life."
The beach had been waist-height in plastic, but lovers now stroll through the surf and children play cricket in the sand.
Local
"If we don't want our generation to face the problem of plastic we have to come here and clean it up."
But just a short distance away, Sky News walked
The plastic was swept down a creek that runs from the city to the Arabian Sea.
Mr Shah has now identified riverside slums that are the source of the plastic. He took Sky News to one slum, home to 5,000 people.
The residents are largely migrants from other regions of India and their needs are ignored by the authorities, said Mr Shah.
"There is no garbage pick up here. Nobody tells them how to handle plastic," he said.
But volunteers are now going from shack to shack, encouraging people to take their plastic to a recycler
Already, 20,000kg of plastic a month is being sent for processing.
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