Every year, after the vibrant Ganpati festival, Mumbai’s shores tell a different story. Amidst the devotion and celebration, broken idols, plastic flowers, and puja materials often wash up on beaches, leaving behind a trail of waste that harms the very environment devotees pray to protect.
For the past eight years, one man and his team have been quietly rewriting this narrative. Chinu Kwatra and his “Beach Warriors” have made it their mission to ensure that devotion does not come at the cost of nature. From cleaning up beaches after visarjan, to running “Visarjan Seva” that helps families immerse idols respectfully, to recycling festival waste into usable products like school benches and daily essentials, their work has turned bhakti into action.
This year, the initiative takes a leap forward with the launch of a live impact dashboard—a first-of-its-kind effort to track the real-time results of their seva. Volunteers and citizens will now be able to see the number of idols handled responsibly, kilograms of waste recycled, and beaches restored during the festival.
For Kwatra, this isn’t just about cleaning up. “True bhakti is protecting the nature Bappa returns to,” he says.
As Mumbai gears up for visarjan season, the Beach Warriors stand ready once again—proving that devotion to Lord Ganesha can also mean devotion to the planet.
Source:The Better India
