When little ‘litter-busters’ wade into the Marina

Revisiting an exercise from 1997 that had 1,200 students from 25 schools “feel” the problem of littering in their hands 

Twenty Years Later by O Henry illustrates how situations — and people — can change unrecognisably, with a long passage of time. Not only situations, even memories can shift and change in the quicksand of time. Accounts of what transpired back then can vary. Piecing together a students-driven exercise on the Marina in 1997 — a good five years over Henry’s threshold for life-altering change — throws up memories dog-eared and soft around the edges, and disintegrating at the slightest touch.

Despite that, the exercise is worth recalling for the mass awareness about beach cleanliness it sought to create, both for the doer and the bystander.

A report in The Hindu in 1997 on the inauguration of the drive notes that around 1,200 children from 25 schools poured into the beach as part of the clean Marina project jointly organised by the CSI Ewart School and Citi Plus, a voluntary organisation. Principal Ahalya Williams is remembered as one of the key persons in the campaign.

A half-a-kilometre stretch of the Marina, on both sides of the Gandhi Statue, came under the radar, with these children picking up litter from there and depositing it in bins.

The waste hauled into the garage trucks was probably measured, but was there an effort to quantify the impact the exercise had on the students?

Sunderathai Lazarus, now principal of Union Christian Matriculation Higher Secondary School and at that time, zoology teacher with CSI Ewart School, recalls that the children were remarking how the garbage was not only on the surface, but had seeped into the sands, instinctively understanding the effect of sustained and relentless littering.

She recalls that it was tough work for the students, as the quantum of garbage was humongous by any standards, past or current. That is not surprising as the drive was in the antediluvian days preceding the advent of a battery of beach-cleaning vehicles that are now a regular sight on the Marina.