Hooghly yields 16 tonnes of waste in 90 days, drive to go on till March
Times of India | 24 December 2025
Kolkata: The Sea Explorers Institute (SEI) has collected 16 tonnes of waste from the river surface in 90 days since since June this year. The cleaning drive focuses on waste collection to create a baseline on river waste while raising awareness among the local communities about the importance of maintaining a clean river environment.
The pilot project along the 1 km stretch of the Hooghly from Prinsep Ghat to Baje Kadamtala Ghat will continue till March 2026. The clean-up, carried out three days a week for two hours each, leads to the recovery of around 200 kg of plastic, glass bottles, and other waste a day. On Tuesday, SEI demonstrated the drive to the public and expressed interest in extending it to Metiabruz and Howrah.
Sudeshna Chatterjee, the secretary general of SEI, said, "The initiative highlights the alarming amount of waste, including plastic, glass bottles and non-biodegradable materials, that are often discarded into the river. What we cleaned is what floats on the surface. This apart, there is a lot more waste that is thrown and sinks to the river bed."
What has come as a shock is the presence of biomedical waste in the garbage. Professor Punarbasu Chatterjee of Environmental Science department at Calcutta University said it was alarming to find that vials of medicines and other biomedical waste in the waste collected from the river surface.
SEI volunteers have also been engaging with local vendors and encouraging them to adopt more sustainable and eco-friendly practices. "We tell them to sell eatables in shaal leaf bowls instead of thermocol and to throw waste in bins, not the river. Though it has been tough to convince the vendors, we managed to rope in some tea sellers and boatmen to participate in the clean-up drive and understand the health risks associated with river pollution," said project coordinator Sudipa Pal.
Apart from the waste dumped in this stretch, there is also a huge amount of waste that is dumped in the river upstream. SEI hopes its initiative will be replicated by others upstream and help transform the quality of water in the river.