: Pune Techie Uses Viral Trend to Collect 70 Tonnes of Waste in 8 Months! #IndiaNEWS #Waste Management The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our lives to a standstill. While most of us fret about coping

Pune Techie Uses Viral Trend to Collect 70 Tonnes of Waste in 8 Months! #IndiaNEWS #Waste Management
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our lives to a standstill. While most of us fret about coping with the new normal of working from home, an environment enthusiast in Pune has a slightly different concern.
Vivek Gurav, the founder of Pune Ploggers, is worried about all the waste lying in public or tourist places across the city. The group’s weekly activity of plogging (picking trash while jogging) has come to a halt.
Not one to be dissuaded by the ongoing pandemic, the 24-year-old has found an innovative way to reuse discarded plastic items to make eco-bricks by stuffing plastic bottles with dry waste.
Along with his team of over 500 volunteers, the software engineer aims to make 25,000 such eco-bricks by the end of July. The bricks will be donated to NGOs to make planters, and slum dwellers for constructing roofs.
How? Simply by utilising the waste plastic in your home.
“A one-litre bottle can store up to a kilo of plastic items or any other non-biodegradable dry waste. It is a win-win solution as volunteers get to utilise their free time productively, engaging in an activity is pro-environment, and most importantly, provide shelter to slum dwellers at no cost,??? Vivek tells The Better India.
Vivek, founder of Pune Ploggers
Vivek moved to Pune six years ago for studies, and always looked for ways to curb the overall garbage generation. Coming from the small town of Jaisingpur, he was shocked to see the reckless dumping and littering habits in Pune.
So, as a student in 2015, he adopted a river. And as a working professional in 2019, he launched the plogging fad.
Under his river-cleaning project, 40 tonnes of plastic waste was prevented from polluting the city’s Indrayani river. Meanwhile, through plogging, his team of volunteers collected about 70 tonnes of dry waste in eight months.
The collected waste is sent to local recycling units and Self-Help Groups who use it to make jewellery and furniture.
Last year, Vivek’s tremendous efforts were even mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his monthly radio show, Mann ki Baat.
Using A Trend to Make Garbage Collection Look Good

A few months into the river cleaning stint, several volunteers started to lose interest.
“It became a monotonous activity, and some people were even discouraged when the waste reappeared every weekend, despite the regular cleanup drives. We had to discontinue the river cleaning, and I lost touch with all my volunteers,??? says Vivek.
However, a few months later, Vivek stumbled upon plogging, a concept that originated in Sweden. The idea behind plogging is to pick up trash while jogging or running so that the environment and the plogger are fit.