With Them For Them (WTFT), a social work group of youth collected around 15 kg expired medicines during a clean drive of mangroves in Airoli early this week. The expired medicines were thrown at the mangroves by some mischievous persons.
Ashish Sawant, the founder of WTFT said that medicines removed from the mangroves were expired a long back. “Some of the injections were expired in March,” said Sawant, adding that a few medicines have time for the expiry. They also found used syringes from the mangroves.
WTFT started the cleanup drive of mangroves around five months ago received support from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) and Coastal and Marine Bio Diversity Centre (CMBDC). “The NMMC sent garbage collection vehicles on Saturday and Sunday for us,” said Sawant, adding that the cleanup drive is conducted under the guidance of Coastal and Marine Bio Diversity Centre, a unit of State Forest Department.
In the last five months, the WTFT had conducted the cleanup drive around four times at Sagar Vihar in Vashi and 18 times in Airoli. “We found from plastic to bear bottles including medicines,” said Sawant, adding that they informed the CMBDC about it.
Earlier, the social group used to dump the waste collected from mangroves directly to NMMC waste collection vehicles. However, now they segregate and make use of from the waste. “We use the plastic bottle collected from mangroves for plantation while bear bottle for other decoration,” said Sawant.
According to Sawant, the WTFT is a catalyst in environment protection and it is concern government body’s responsibility to take action against people who throw biological or medical waste in mangroves.