Clean up 3: or the story of keep trying

Some of the folks at clean-up 3

You must remember the first two clean-ups (1, 2)? It didn't end with those. The green-gang had yet another clean up and this one unlike the previous one was attended predominantly by students and a fair number. I can't say exactly how many, people kept drifting in and out of the effort depending on their schedules, but lets say at least 15 in all. I was thrilled!

We picked an area around one of the messes, the C mess. The garbage here is largely the responsibility of mant of the very lazy students IISc breeds. Folks won't walk 2 meters to a garbage can, they'll leave things right where they are. It doesn't help that the place is surrounded by residential areas. Much the same thing happens and occasionally domestic waste also ends up in this place. Its a thorough-fare as well, so you can imagine the state. Anyway, we had a long session of picking up after the .... and then we had a discussion about what next.

Mahua recruiting for Green-gang

Many were understandably not happy about the idea of clean ups alone, and wanted to do more to ensure that places we cleaned would remain that way. We initiated a few things, one of these has so far generated a positive response. We decided to ask IISc admin for more dustbins, to begin with in this area. We got much more than that, we were told that the area was ear-marked for 'development' and they asked us to plan what we wanted there. After some back and forth, it was decided we didn't trees and bush hacked away, since the areas actually quite rich in bird life, and we presented a plan for a few extra dustbins, lights and cleared paths. And voila! Work seems to be already underway!

This is the most positive and immediate response I've seen IISc make about just about anything. Good to know it can be done!

The other clean-up efforts had also spawned several initiatives, many of them have gotten quite far in themselves. A post about them in a short while, or maybe Arati who has put in a great deal of effort into many of those endeavors, will pick on this and oblige us with a post on what's been going on?

PS: For those of you wondering why the blog silence for a while, I made the last push needed to finish and submit my thesis. It's done and we'll be back to regular schedule shortly.