Tarun Karthick
Campbell Bay, 30 January 2021
Great Nicobar is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful Islands in the world. The natural beauty of the beaches of Great Nicobar is picturesque. The Great Nicobar Island has minimum pollution and the local plastic waste is not thrown away into seas by the residents.
Garbage management in Great Nicobar is improving slowly with the Panchayats initiating several steps for collection of garbage directly from the homes of the residents in exchange for a small fee.
When one travels down the North-South Road towards Shastri Nagar the colour of the water enthrals everyone which is visible at a distance from the road. The beaches turn extremely beautiful after one crosses the Laxmi Nagar Village. These beaches by the farms of the settler families are palm-fringed and extremely attractive.
These picturesque beaches are however battling a serious problem of plastic pollution. At any given point of time, there are tonnes of plastic waste in stretches of beaches from 24 Km in North-South Road to 31 Kms. The accumulated plastic waste is not the result of local garbage disposal but is accumulated by the sea on the shores of Great Nicobar.
This problem of foreign plastic waste accumulating in Great Nicobar is not new. Since I was born and brought up in Great Nicobar before leaving for my studies at Port Blair, I am aware of this problem. During my childhood, we used to visit these beaches with our parents and friends to collect toys which have washed ashore the shores opposite our houses. My introduction to Spiderman was through the shores of Great Nicobar where I found an intact toy of Spiderman and I remember wondering who he is and what he does.
A closer look at the plastic waste and you will find empty packaged drinking water bottles, different kind of bottles of medicines, some damaged fishing equipment, big and small chunks of thermocol, different kind of footwear etc.
Empty plastic packaged water bottles are the number one pollutants on the beaches of Great Nicobar and a closer look at the label of such bottles at different areas in the stretch between Laxmi Nagar and Gandhi Nagar explains that the country of origin of the bottles in most of the cases is Malaysia.
The deposit of such plastic waste on the shores of Great Nicobar is constant and we will have to act on it very soon. A coordinated effort to regularly clean our beaches needs to launch. Different Govt. Agencies, General Public, NGOs etc need to come together to formulate a plan to clean our beaches and safely dispose the plastic waste.
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