National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT-C) Director Prasad Krishna has exhorted the student community to take up the ‘Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar’ (Clean Coast - Safe Sea) project to transform coasts in the State into garbage-free zones. He was inaugurating a one-day workshop on the NIT-C campus here on Wednesday.
Despite Kerala having the highest literacy rate and progress in universal educational standards, Prof. Krishna lamented that the State’s streets and other public spaces were literally piled up with garbage.
B.K. Tyagi, scientist, Vigyan Prasar, and C.R. Sreeraj, marine ecologist, interacted with students from various educational institutions in the district. M.K. Ravi Varma, head, Department of Physics, NIT-C; P. Predeep, professor of physics, NIT-C; Sandeep Barua, scientist, Vigyan Prasar; A. Sujith, professor of chemistry, NIT-C; Abdul Nasar, District Institute of Education and Training-DIET, and Biju Dharmapalan, Vigyan Prasar, spoke.
As part of the programme, painting and essay writing contests were conducted for schoolchildren on the topic ‘Clean Coast, Safe Sea’. Awareness programmes were held at the Kozhikode South beach in the afternoon.
The Clean Coast, Safe Sea campaign is a 75-day citizen-led programme for improving ocean health through collective action. The campaign began on July 5 and has three strategic underlying goals — consume responsibly, segregate waste at home, and dispose responsibly — that target transformation and environmental conservation through behaviour change.
Seventy-five beaches have been identified across the country and five beaches — Beypore, Cherai, Kuzhupilly, Azheekal, and Kovalam — from the State for the coastal clean-up drive with 75 volunteers for every kilometre of the coastline. The campaign will culminate with the largest beach cleaning event on September 17 on International Coastal Clean-up Day covering 75 beaches across India’s 7,500 km-plus coastline.
The Ministries of Environment Forest and Climate Change, Education, Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Jal Shakti, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry, National Service Scheme, Indian Coast Guard, National Disaster Management Authority, and Paryavaran Sanrakshan Gatividhi along with other government departments, social organisations, and educational institutions are part of the campaign.
