Cycle to recycle this Environment Day

Organised by RU Reducing Reusing Recycling (RUR) with support from Sahakari Bhandar,the eight-km cycle ride from Worli to Matunga will involve participants collecting empty Tetra Pak cartons from locations on the way to deposit them for recycling.

The main purpose of the event is to involve more people in recycling,not just through awareness but through action to reduce the load on the city’s landfills and help in an efficient waste management.

“For the last two years,we have an initiative with Sahakari Bhandar,as part of which people can drop their empty Tetra Pak cartons at the 17 locations of the store and Tetra Pak takes the responsibility to recycle them. But we realised that despite collecting around 25,000 cartons per month on an average and around 2 lakh cartons last year,our collection is only 20 per cent of the actual cartons consumed in the city. We need to target a larger group of people to bring up that number,” said Monisha Narke,founder,RUR.

“We wanted to do something action-oriented to spread the message to a larger group and also combine the issues of health and environment. ‘Cycle to Recycle’ will give people an opportunity to do short haul cycling and reduce air pollution as well as help recycle.”

The two-hour ride will kick off at 8 am from Worli and will be conducted in two parts. The first route will begin at Worli Dairy with participants going up to Sahakari Bhandar at Agar Bazaar,Prabhadevi.

The next route will go from there past Shivaji Park Gymkhana and Sena Bhavan to end at Sahakari Bhandar Matunga.

En route,the group will stop at Blue Sea Banquets in Worli and restaurants around Shivaji Park to collect recyclable waste and deposit at the Sahakari Bhandar outlets for recycling.

Those who are aged 15 or above will be eligible to participate in the ride and they need to register themselves prior to the event.

The cartons will be turned into items such as notebooks and tissue rolls,made out of the paper part,or roofing sheets,made from the Poly Al (polystyrene aluminium) part.