Swatch Sagar, Surakshit Sagar Campaign

Context

The "Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar/Clean Coast Safe Sea “campaign is a 75-day citizen-led campaign for improving ocean health through collective action.

About

Swatch Sagar, Surakshit Sagar Campaign:

The campaign has 3 strategic underlying goals that target transformation and environmental conservation through behaviour change. The three underlying goals of the campaign are:
Consume Responsibly
Segregate waste at home and
Dispose Responsibly.
The coastal clean-up drive will be carried out at 75 beaches across the country with 75 volunteers for every kilometre of the coastline.
The campaign will culminate with the largest beach cleaning event on Sept 17, 2022 (International Coastal Cleanup Day) covering 75 beaches across India’s 7500+km coastline.
Ministries involved: This campaign will include Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Ministry of Education, Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Ministry of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry, National Service Scheme (NSS), Indian Coast Guard, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Paryavaran Sanrakshan Gatividhi (PSG), along with other government departments, social organizations and educational institutions.
The campaign will combine both virtual and physical formats for delivering key messages and engaging the target audience in adopting lifestyle and behavioural changes that promote environmental sustainability.
- Examples of virtual activities include quizzes, pledges and challenges.
- Physical activities will include the actual beach clean-up along with rallies, skits and contests etc.
It is the first-of-its-kind and longest running Coastal clean-up campaign in the world with highest number of people participating in it.
Through this campaign, a mass behavioural change among the masses is intended by raising awareness about how plastic usage is destroying our marine life.
A mobile app “Eco Mitram” has been launched to spread awareness about the campaign and also for the common people for voluntary registration for the beach cleaning activity.
The target of the programme is to remove 1,500 tonnes of marine litter from the sea-coasts which will be a huge relief to marine life and the people staying in coastal areas.