Cubbon Park De-littered

Cubbon Park De-littered
Monday September 24 2007 10:38 IST

Express News Service

ON a day when most people were recovering from a heart stopping India-Australia match, several people from Oracle chose to spend the day picking litter and painting kerbstones on the sidewalks at Cubbon Park. Absolute dedication to civic causes?

Well not really, but a chance to volunteer along with Cubbon Park Mitra Sangha, an organisation that has been working at the Park for the past eight months.

About 36 volunteers spent the day picking up litter from various places at the park, talking to people spreading awareness about keeping the park clean and also swishing up the sidewalks with fresh green and white paint. Oracle volunteer Guneet Singh said they had gathered about 160 kgs of litter and they had not even finished yet. The Department of Horticulture would be later picking up all the garbage collected at the site.

One part of the cleaning involved spotting people who are littering the place and talking to them about the importance of maintaining clean surroundings.

One of the volunteers remarked that most people they approached including the vendors at the roadside were open to suggestions about keeping the place clean.

‘‘Initially we were hesitant thinking that they might be very hostile. But they were surprisingly very open and most people agreed that it was very important that we try to maintain this cleanliness all the time,’’ she said.

Artist Suresh Jayaram, who works with Cubbon Park Sangha Mitra, interacted with volunteers and devised ways to make the non bio degradable waste more visible. The volunteers chose to portray the waste as Organic Versus Inorganic to highlight the waste that we create rather than instinctively hide it.

Suresh said, ‘‘We are trying to promote art as activism. It is a kind of creative intervention. The point is not just to make people aware of the litter they have spread in this place.

We are also trying to effect a change in their way of thinking.’’

He also said that using litter as an expression of art was an attempt to make it socially relevant and convey the message of reusing the waste as well.

Cubbon Park Mitra Sangha which routinely conducts these clean up programmes have gone a step ahead and are starting a pilot programme for recycling the waste that is generated at Bal Bhavan

Mitra Sangha cleaning Cubbon Park as part of clean city awareness programme in Bangalore on Sunday.