World Environment Day: Groups discuss novel ways to make Coimbatore plastic-free

COIMBATORE: Reducing plastics and increasing the city’s green cover seemed to dominate World Environment Day celebrations in Coimbatore on Tuesday.
Different institutes and groups of people came up with innovative ways to reduce the plastic usage in the city. Right from trying to upscale plastic and use it as a construction material to giving shops free cloth bags, environmentalists were leaving no stone unturned to make the district as plastic free as possible.

The day started with city-based NGO Siruthuli setting up pet bottle collection centres in some of the popular restaurants, hospitals and halls, where people were requested to throw all their used plastic bottles into the collection tubs. The drive to collect these bottles would go on till June 10, said Siruthuli spokeswoman Shruthi Suresh.

“Instead of allowing these plastic bottles to just go into landfills, we decided to experiment with upscaling plastic,” she said.

Siruthuli plans to try constructing toilets using the plastic bottles. The plastic bottles will be used instead of bricks for erecting the 4x4 sized walls.

“We got the idea from a few eco-engineers and videos. We will be requiring around 2,200 to 2,500 bottles for this initiative and we plan to complete the toilet by this month end,” said Suresh. “If successful, we plan to build a few more such toilets in the city,” she added.

The Ramalinga Nagar Residents Welfare Association, which is already in news for its initiatives to keep the area clean, plastic-free and plant new saplings, started off the day with planting saplings at a reserve site in Nachimuthu layout.

“We got the site cleaned off overgrowth using a JCB. We then planted around 30 saplings,” said secretary of the association M S Vijayaraghavan.

“We also plan to de-weed a children’s park in the area later this week,” he said.

The residents also plan to visit the shopkeepers in the area to donate more cloth bags and to reiterate the importance of not using plastic bags.

The Tree Trust, headed by its founder Yoganathan, roped in a few corporates and planted anywhere between five to 50 saplings in 297 schools selected across Coimbatore and Pollachi.

The planting of saplings in Devanga Higher Secondary School in R S Puram was attended by district’s chief education officer P Ayyannan.

The forest campus is going to have a team of joggers, but who will call themselves ploggers on Tuesday, who will be jogging through the campus and collecting all the pieces of plastic they see in their way. They have formed around five teams of 20 people each to jog through the many residential areas of the campus.

A few members will be planting some trees along the Avenue Road on the campus. Children visiting the campus’s Gass Forest Museum will be educated about the dangers of plastic.