Keeping our sea and its beaches clean is as essential as keeping our house clean. Throwing trash near the beaches and in the sea water is equivalent to causing pollution. To top it, sea creatures tend to eat the plastics, cigarette butts and other trash that is discarded, as they find it to be a source of food. Trash near the beaches is a blot on the landscape of the area.

Recently, I organized my second season of Beach Clean Up Initiative through my youth group We Care. Our main focus was the maximum collection of cigarette butts as while walking near the beach I always notice people throwing cigarette butts anywhere with no regard to the arduous work done by the municipality workers who have hard time in picking up such small but hazardous items.

To start with,  I made a brochure inviting my group members, neighbors and friends to come for this noble task in large numbers. To my utter happiness, I received an excellent response. Even unknown people who grew aware about the campaign showed keenness to join in along with their children.

My purpose of doing beach clean-up was not just collecting the waste but also educating the people especially the younger  generation that we should not misuse our precious coastline by discarding garbage and unwanted items that are so harmful to the marine environment. I told them to create the awareness amongst their relatives and friends.

As a biology student, I provided them an explanation of the Cigarette Butt as a menace to health and the environment. To be more specific, benzene and nicotine present in the cigarette butts forms polynuclear compounds due to incomplete combustion on entry into aquatic organisms and leads to carcinogeneity or cancer-production at their cellular level. In most cases, this is lethal and also puts the marine environment into jeopardy.

Youth and children from various age categories joined the event with utmost excitement. Even children as young as 6 – 7 year olds did their bit towards cleaning the beach and picking up cigarette butts with no sign of inhibition or weariness at any point during the noble cause.

After we scoured the shoreline, we all gathered at one place and put all our collections one by one in a container. We were all amazed to see the amount of waste especially cigarette butts we had collected. I immediately went to the municipal workers who were doing their duty. They took the waste and moved on but not before, giving all of us a broad smile. Their warms smiles gave us the satisfaction and inspiration that no success in the world could have provided.

We owe a lot to our ocean and we need to ensure that its shore line is devoid of all kinds of waste whether it is plastics, cigarette butts or any other disposables. Surely, all our green volunteers returned from the Clean-Up with a rejuvenated sense of environmentalism and concern for Mother Earth.