More than 1,500 volunteers spent the weekend on the ghats of the Kesari river in Amrauli and pulled out about 14 tonnes of waste, most of it plastic bags, bottles and old clothes, organisers said.
The cleanup covered a four-kilometre stretch between the old bridge and the cremation ground, split into 20 zones, each led by a school, college or residents' group. Municipal trucks carried the waste to a sorting yard, where recyclers took away about a third of it.
"The river does not make this rubbish. We do," said Pooja Saxena, a college lecturer who coordinated the event. "Cleaning is the easy part. Stopping it from coming back is the real work."
What volunteers found
- Plastic bags and wrappers made up more than half of the waste by volume.
- Three drains carried most of the plastic into the river after rain.
- Volunteers also found 600 glass bottles and a dozen discarded mattresses.
The organisers have asked the municipality to fit trash nets at the three drains, add bins at every ghat, and fine shops that sell banned thin plastic bags. A municipal official said nets would be installed at two drains this month as a trial.
The group plans to return on the first Sunday of every month, and will publish photographs of each zone so residents can see whether the ghats stay clean.
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