To make India litter-free

On September 1, marathon runner Ripu Daman Bevli will be setting out from Kochi on a ‘plogging’ journey cleaning the trash in 50 cities all over India  

By Shevlin Sebastian 

It is a sunny Sunday morning at Leisure Valley Park in Gurgaon City. In the sprawling 25-acre park, there are fountains, slides, gardens, large flowering trees, and numerous cemented walking paths. A group of people have gathered -- a mix of children, youngsters, middle-aged professionals, and seniors with grey hair. In the middle of this group, is a tall man with an orange T-shirt with ‘Super Sikh’ embossed on it. He is Ripu Daman Bevli, the pioneer in India of ‘plogging’: collecting garbage as you go jogging. 

Soon, the group is handed reusable gloves and bags. Then Ripu says, “When you bend down to pick up the first piece of litter that’s where your journey begins. That's because the awareness that you get from picking up that first piece is an unmatched feeling. If you don’t do anything else, you will surely stop littering.” 

The group nods and Ripu says, “This is a pristine place. But you will be shocked at the amount of trash you will be able to collect.” 

Soon, the group spreads out all over the park….

One hour later, the group has collected over 400 kgs of trash: white plastic packets, wrappers, chips and biscuit packets, numerous Coca Cola and Pepsi plastic bottles, clothes, condoms and sanitary pads. 

“The group was in disbelief because the place they thought was clean, was actually so dirty,” says Ripu. “Our normal eye is an ignorant one. We don’t see trash. We just walk past it because we are so busy in our day-to-day activities.” 

Ripu has so far organised and supported 312 drives across 21 cities to make people aware of how this casual throwing of trash damages the environment and spoils the beauty of our villages, towns and cities. 

And on September 1, he is embarking on his most ambitious project: a clean-up of 50 cities in different parts of India, spread over a distance of over 1000 km. The estimated time is two-and-a-half months. The starting point is Kochi. From there, he will go to Madurai, Coimbatore, Salem, Puducherry, Chennai, several other cities in South India, then to Kolkata, Guwahati and cities in North India. 

He is being helped by three friends, Shresth Saha, Sanjay Karki and Siddharth Shankar, who will be taking turns to drive the crew car, and uploading the details of the journey on social media. Ripu is also accompanied by the sponsor R/Elan, a company which makes sustainable fabrics out of PET bottles. “They will take care of the waste management,” says Ripu. 

He plans to start at 4.30 a.m. and do cleaning till about 2.30 p.m. It will be tough on him physically and mentally. “One hour of plogging is equivalent to four hours of jogging,” says Ripu. “It’s exhausting because you are squatting every second or third step. You cannot build momentum. Also, seeing garbage all the time can be depressing.”  

But not everybody is a fan of what he is doing. “Some people asked why they should do a ragpicker’s job,” says Ripu. “My reply to them is that you never question people when they are throwing the trash. But you are questioning us when we are picking it up.” 

The Delhi-based Ripu began this programme two years ago. He was a marathon runner who would go for early morning training. “At that time, there are much less people and traffic,” he says. “That’s when I observed a lot of trash all over the place. All of us crib and complain, but no one does anything about it. So I decided to do something.” 

In December, 2017, Ripu started collecting garbage from the streets of Delhi and began posting pics on Facebook and Instagram via the page that he created: ‘My City, My Responsibility’. “Suddenly I saw a lot of people applauding and taking an interest,” he says. “Many wanted to join. So we organised our first clean-up. And we posted pics of ‘before’ and ‘after’.”  

Following this, Ripu decided to take it to the national level. So, he went to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata and launched drives. 

Meanwhile, in January 2018, Ripu came across a news item about Erik Ahlström, a Swedish runner who was doing the same thing in Stockholm. But he called it ‘plogging’: it’s a combination of the Swedish word ‘plocka upp’, which means ‘pick up’ and jogging. Finding it an attractive word, Ripu has renamed his group as ‘Ploggers of India’. “It’s a catchy word and will draw the millennials,” says Ripu, who has taken this as his life mission and does not have a regular job.  

“I am doing this out of passion,” he says. “There is no financial gain. My family is giving me moral support, but they have apprehensions, especially on the financial side. However, for the long-term success of the mission, I will have to bring some financial self-sustainability. My aim is simple: I want to make India litter-free. I want to bring out a behavioural change in the people so that India will be as clean as any developed country.” 

(The New Indian Express, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode)