Clean beach - Clean heart

As written by Rtr. Nisuri Munasinghe,

“Be part of the solution, not the pollution.”

Sri Lanka has been blessed with some of the most beautiful beaches, making it one of the popular beach destinations in the world. The entire island is surrounded by miles and miles of gorgeous coastline and blue ocean. Unfortunately, this eye-catching island has ranked the 5th in the list of countries that release plastic and polythene waste to the ocean.

Many water pollutants are released to the ocean from coastlines. Effects of toxic waste on marine animals, disruption of coral reefs, depletion of oxygen content in water, failure of reproduction in sea creatures are some grave problems caused by this misact of irresponsible people in Sri Lanka. Ocean pollution can affect human health as well through food chains. It is necessary to keep our beaches clean if we hope to keep our lives clean.

As a small step towards a better tomorrow, Rotaract Mora joined hands with the project TRASH HUNT 2019 on the World Cleanup Day. Trash Hunt is a beach cleanup project organized by Rotaract Club of Pearl Island in collaboration with Rotaract Mora, Rotaract Club of ACBT along with the Interact Clubs of Wesley College, Ananda College, Maliyadeva College, Maliyadeva Girls College and Colombo North.

Early morning on the 21st of September, more than 100 passionate Rotaractors and Interactors gathered at Dehiwala Barracuda Restaurant premises. All the participants were given a coloured wrist band and were divided into 8 groups accordingly. The goal for the day was to clean up 8 beaches from Panadura to Bambalapitiya. Participants were provided with gloves and garbage bags for the cleanup. At about 7:30 in the morning, teams left the premises to start up with the assigned beaches.

Many of the beaches were not at their best, with constant trails of garbage on the sands. But every single participant contributed to collect garbage without hesitation so that they can pay off even a little debt towards our motherland. It’s truly inspiring to witness the power of the youth working together for a common cause.

Small or big, every piece of trash left on the beach would have contributed to a death of another sea creature. Animals do not leave trash on the beach. We are responsible for the waste we generate. So Rotaract Mora took one step ahead to keep the beaches clean by placing wooden trash bins created by our members. We placed the trash bins at every single beach point we cleaned up, so that everyone can think before dumping garbage heartlessly.

After a successful mission, all the participants gathered again at Barracuda Restaurant premises by noon. Fully loaded lorries full of garbage arrived to the location at the same time. Our teams altogether collected garbage all of which roughly weighted around 91 kg of PET, 6 kg of yogurt cups, 37 kg of glass and 20 kg of other trash .We handed over the recyclable garbage to the Eco Spindles and Flip Yarn companies for the purpose of recycling and non-recyclable garbage to the Municipal Council. We couldn’t be happier or prouder of ourselves than this as we have added a value to every single trash bin we collected.

Let’s not stop here! Let’s contribute in every possible way to keep our beaches trash-free. Maybe it’s not our trash, but it definitely is our planet!

Clean beach, Salty breeze, Soft sand, Rolling waves…

What’s not to love?