Dumas beach of Surat is one of the most well-known beaches in Surat city but the most visited and known part is just a single part of the stretch that exists. When I and my friend once went to the beach, We found that those parts are less visited and part of the reason being that they are not frequently clean, on top of which the people who visit those stretches pollute the area more by seeing the trash over there, thinking it will be cleaned by someone.
This, after all, can lead to the building of harmful materials like plastic, Polystyrene, and other non-biodegradable material.
Most of the time, a significant part of the leftover trash is taken back into the sea by the high tides at night, which could harm wildlife both on land and underwater. This all leads to the destruction of the environment through the spread of Miro-plastic, Toxic substances including expired medication, and heavy metals like lead; causing harm at multiple levels.
Through this collaborative effort as a team which spanned from 13 August to 17 September, we visited the beach every weekend for a whole month to clean the shore and make it a clean and safe place for humans and other wildlife species; following SDGs 13, 14, and 15. Even on the day of 17- September the International Coastal Cleanup Day, we luckily met another cleanup organization and we collaborated on the day for the greater good.

LO 4- Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience.

The parts of the beach that we planned to clean had a lot of waste littered all around the shore. On top of which the days we planned to clean the beach were the weekend, which means that in order to achieve our goals we had to come to the beach in the early hours and complete the cleaning before the tourist and people start arriving. Throughout the garbage, there were all types of waste including small pieces of plastic, bottles, cans, polythene, and broken glass bottle. All of the mentioned waste has to be hand-picked, so it was a very exhausting and tiering process. Keeping in mind the time the amount of time it would take us to reach and clean the place, we would have to leave at 6 A.M. from our home every weekend; so after all, considering the weekday of work, we had to wake up early on weekend and go through physical exertion for a whole month. All of this required a high amount of commitment and perseverance from every student.

LO 5- Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively.

We had a total of 16 people in the group but only the core group including me and 8 people completed 7 days of cleaning. While other students were asked to provide their efforts as much as they can. Besides that no matter what amount of students came or not, we would strategically plan the whole process of that day. Mainly we would subdivide the group and then those sub-groups were assigned a small different part of the beach that had to be cleaned. This strategic planning with the help of working collaboratively as a team helped us to achieve our goals of the day on time and effectively. On the other hand for 2-3 days we had to change the strategies. days we couldn’t divide the group into sub-group due to the complete cluster of waste that washed up, so we had to work on that part of the shore as a whole team and then move to another cluster.

LO 6- Engagement with issues of global significance.

Many countries have the global issue of waste management and unfortunately, India is one of them. Many people throw their trash in flowing rivers to dispose of it, while all of that trash ends up in the open sea in the end. This floating trash many times ends up harm of the local aquatic life in rivers, seas, and beaches and; Sometimes ends up contributing to The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. However, our action supports the SDGs: Climate Action; Life Below Water; Life On Land. We hope Through our efforts and initiative we start the chain reaction, where local people including the tourist seeing the cleaned beach give in some efforts to maintain it clean. Last, helping both nature and us.

LO 7- Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions.

Our actions and our behavior towards mother nature decided the outcome of those actions. Any unethical action that we perform or any unethical choice that we take will end up resulting in a bad outcome for both of the stakeholders. Moreover, every person needs to understand their part of the responsibility. It would be more than enough if every person keep track, recognise and consider their choices and actions. As said previously if people start to consider their choices and re-thinking their idea of “What difference will one person make?” a huge positive difference can be made. Hence, everyone needs to account for the ethics of their choices and actions, like we did and started doing our duty.