Surat: The favourite watering hole of Gujaratis, Daman has once again opened for tourists, but its scenic beauty has been marred with masks dumped unhygienically on the beach.
As face masks have become the biggest pollutants, a Vadodara-based NGO Caravan Classroom took up the task of cleaning the beach along with Daman Municipal Council (DMC) and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
Volunteers of the NGO, DMC and CPCB started the four-day long cleaning exercise on World Environment Day and will culminate on June 8, which happens to be World Ocean Day.
“We wanted to clean a beach as oceans are getting polluted due to single-use plastic dumped on the beach since restrictions are still in place in Gujarat, we chose Daman,” said Rajeshwari Singh of the NGO.
She added that on Saturday morning they were able to collect nine drums full of garbage in just three hours.
“Six to seven of our volunteers, 25 workers of DMC and CPCB covered a stretch of 500 meters, and we could collect this much garbage,” she said.
The team found used masks strewn around the beach along with PET bottles and plastic cutlery.
“We did not initiate this drive to welcome tourists to a clean beach but make people conscious about the environment especially the ocean,” Singh said.