Heal The Planet | Phase 2

Project Heal the Planet phase 2 was held on 28th of September, 2019 at the Mount Lavinia beach with the participation of Rotaractors and many volunteers. The main objective of the project was to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the coastal line that surrounds the whole island of Sri Lanka. It was also aimed to spread awareness about the importance of reducing plastic usage.  

There is a sheer amount of waste produced in Sri Lanka, that is disposed inadequately. 7500MT of waste is produced per day and a considerable amount of it ends up in the ocean affecting its ecology directly. For example, the coral reefs, the marine flora and fauna are deeply affected by the harmful chemical substances that are released by some of these pollutants. Recent studies also show that most of the marine organisms have ingested microplastics in their gastrointestinal systems. The sea turtles and fish end up swallowing plastic and polythene mistakenly. These factors itself is a great reason why we at the Rotaract Club of Colombo Mid City wanted to come up with the project Heal the Planet.

Over 15 members of our club participated in HTP Phase 02. With the help of all the participants, we were able to clean up an area of 1km in the coastal area. We ended up collecting heaps of trash that included polythene bags, single-use water bottles, old clothes, straws, plastic toys, rigifoam, beer cans, liquor bottles, cigarette butts e.t.c. These were handed over to recycling points.

An exemplary feature of our project is that we use gunny sacks for collecting trash as we firmly believe that adding another plastic sack to the environment wouldn't help us in any way. We hope this would inspire many other volunteers taking part in the beach clean up projects around the country and across the globe to reduce the plastic and polythene usage as much as possible.  

Special thanks goes out to the Rotaract Club of KDU for joining hands with us in the second phase of Heal the Planet.