Blue @ Marina!!!

The Marina beach, world's second longest beach is also the number one landmark in Chennai. But the cleanliness on the beach remains a huge challenge. When someone says Marina, two things will come in our mind - Beach and Dirty. The pollution at Marina is pretty higher when compared to the Besant nagar beach and the other beaches in Chennai.

As part of the Celebration of Service Initiative, IBM joined hands with Exnora to clean Marina Beach on 25th June 2011. Exnora is derived from Excellent, Novel and Radical ideas (in solving environmental problems by involving those who caused the problem) which focuses on preserving nature and preventing environmental degradation.

We were asked to come in IBM T-Shirts and families were also invited to be a part of the initiative. People dressed in blue Ts were spotted at Triumph of Labour Statue @ 7:30 AM. The cleaning started with a small talk by Senior members of IBM and everyone was given a apron, mask, shower cap and a pair of gloves for protection purposes. One big green bag was given to each group to put the trashes. Baskar, Gayathri, Jacintha, Edwin, Scalet, Ramesh and I were a group. We started collecting the trash from one corner of the beach and covered upto half the stretch as the other half was taken care by HCL. I thought of listing the various trashes we found at the start of the cleaning activity, but I am not gonna list it down as remembering it itself disgusts me. I really wonder how people are able to pollute the beach to the core. No, I am not gonna take a lecture here. Anyway, most of us were exhausted bcoz of the bending and walking in 2 hours itself. I remembered our KG rhymes "Bits of Paper" while picking up the trash. :-)

At the end of the session, we piled up all the trash bags which was then collected by Chennai Corporation garbage trucks. IBM had also distributed Coffee, Tea, Biscuits and Sandwich which sort of made my breakfast. Point to be noted people, all the garbage and leftovers were put in bins only. :-) Had a photo session after it and we all dispersed.

Forgot one important news, I was also caught in action by Kalaignar channel and was telecasted in News. :-) Unfortunately I missed the news as I was travelling but my friends and colleauges were able to spot me.