The Litter Letter Project at Mansoorabad Pedda Cheruvu

There are two ways to reduce littering and lakes pollution – Enforce strict rules or change people’s mindset. While the first one is easy, it just shifts the littering somewhere else, but it doesn’t stop. Though it is a tough and slow process to change sociopaths, we chose the latter.  

Being part of a running community, it was easy for us to organize plogging activities. We cleaned up Mansoorabad Pedda Cheruvu, Hyderabad multiple times, picking up a truckload of trash every time. Our plogging and dumping continued at the same rate – no visible change nor a ray of hope. 

We looked back and searched for creative ways that are thought-provoking. We thought of making ecobricks from the plastic trash and using them to build structures and letters. We couldn’t move forward because we either lacked experience or guidance. During a discussion with an ecobricks community in the Philippines, we learned about “the litter letter project“ idea. It was a great idea and we couldn’t stop ourselves to build “reTHINK” litter letters. 

Rushed to a local scrap shop and bought used steel TMT rebars of 8 to 12 mm size of varying lengths. Dimensions of each letter were noted on a piece of paper using photoshop with letters of 4.5 feet in height. Two letters (R and E) were printed for better results. A local welding shop cut the rebars and welded them to make 3D letters as per design. We transported them to a home garage where we could wrap the chicken mesh. We bought chicken mesh after estimating the number of square feet needed. We cut the chicken mesh using a mesh cutter to the letter sizes and stitched them with a binding wire. We transported them to the site and installed them using concrete mix. With our limited time, we have finished this project in three weeks’ time and spent an amount of Rs 15,000. 

Every time, few environment lovers and runners were involved in plogging activities. They come and go, but actual trash dumpers are local residents. So, for this project, we wanted to involve local residents in the plogging activity for better results. With a huge effort, we could convince and get the support of local residents. We organized a massive plogging activity to remove tons of plastic trash even from the lake too.  We have also painted the lake area with a “NO PLASTICS” message.

The day we were ready to segregate and fill the trash into litter letters, municipal workers took all the trash away without our awareness. Sigh! We had to collect more litter from the lake again to fill them.  

We invited local leaders (MLA and Corporator), environmentalists, walkers, runners, local residents to inaugurate the litter letter project. All guests picked up trash and filled the letters. The event was concluded after their worthwhile speech. 

We hope these litter letters bring some change. If not everyone, at least a few people start to ‘reTHINK’ what they trash and where they trash. 

We hope this “reTHINK Litter Letter Project” is a way to begin the conversation –  to stop littering and stop lakes pollution.

• Dha3R Founders and Changemakers.