The Midway Journey, an initiative which aims to create awareness on the hazards of municipal solid waste, is starting a five-month clean-up drive here from Wednesday.

The six members of the organising committee said they will clean the riverbank here every Sunday and around 50 people have confirmed participation in the cleaning drive.

The members of The Midway Journey are Aveepsa Gogoi, Neelakshi Mour, Abhinav Dilip, Subham Dey, Ashadeep Baruah and Shirshendu Sekhar Das.

“We will conduct clean-up drives along the Brahmaputra in the Uzan Bazar area here every Sunday starting from its inauguration day on January 1. Through the drives, we want to educate people about marine plastic pollution and also teach them how to segregate the waste collected at the riverbank. We will also ask the citizens of the area and our volunteers to submit their weekly dry waste and the scrap dealers of Uzan Bazar will buy it at the riverbank every Sunday,” social activist and one of the organising members, Shirshendu Sekhar Das, told The Telegraph.

“Start your New year by dirtying your hands for the environment! It is not your waste but it is your planet for sure. Join us for the season’s cleanup drive. What is your resolution? My resolution this year is to take responsibility of my waste,” said a poster of the cleaning drive, urging people to join the movement.

Das said they will do it till the water level is down. Subsequently, different kinds of awareness camps will be organised, he said.

The Midway Journey aims to help people segregate waste at source and inspires everyone to reduce the amount of waste they generate.

“In the upcoming five months, we plan to completely clean the Uzan Bazar riverbank with the support of our volunteers and citizens of the area. We will educate the citizens through workshops in schools, we will hold meetings with eateries and other shops of the area. We aim to reduce the use of single-use plastic as much as possible,” Das said.

Das said the commissioner of the Guwahati Municipal Corporation, Debeswar Malakar, and its members are expected to attend the inaugural ceremony.

The local NGO, which looks into the daily door-to-door waste collection, will join them too, he said.

Confirming that Malakar will attend the ceremony, he said, “It is an impressive initiative by the students and organisers. The locals and students have come forward to create awareness against plastic waste. We need to create more awareness to make the city pollution free. Everyone must join the cleaning drive and we have asked people to cooperate.”

Malakar also thanked the organisers and wished them luck.

“The beauty of the Brahmaputra has been destroyed as people throw plastic and other waste into the river. We clean the riverside from Kamakhya to Raj Bhavan but after just one week it becomes dirty and full of plastic waste once again. That’s why we need mass awareness on plastic,” he added.

Abhinav and Neelakshi are architects while Subham works in a private company.

Aveepsa is an MSW student at TISS Guwahati and Ashadeep is doing her graduation in economics in a city college.

“We focus on our individual choices and consumption habit before we tell others. We believe in individual steps that can make a difference. Carrying our own cutlery, water bottle, switching to menstrual cups from sanitary pads are a few things we have done. We have a bigger goal and all these are a part of it,” Aveepsa said.