Bhavnagar (Gujarat) [India] September 23 : Tejas Doshi, a doctor inspired by Swachh Bharat Mission has revamped Gujarat's Bhavnagar by tirelessly working to make the city plastic-free.
Doshi has led various environmental conservation projects with great success. Recognizing his contribution to cleanliness initiatives, he has been appointed the brand ambassador for Bhavnagar under the Swachh Bharat Mission by the Government of India in 2019.
"In the last decade, our forests have increasingly become littered with plastic bottles, bags, and wrappers. Someone had to step up and take action to clean this waste. Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat Mission, I felt a deep responsibility to give back to the earth that has given me so much. That's how my journey to make Plastic-free Bhavnagar began," said Tejas Doshi, who has been serving as a general physician in Bhavnagar for the past 23 years.
The nationwide 'Swachhata Hi Seva' campaign was launched on September 17. It was also kicked off across Gujarat by CM Bhupendra Patel.
In 2014, Doshi launched the 'No Honking Project'. The initial plan was to implement this project over 52 weeks, involving 52,000 students from 52 schools (with 1,000 students per school). These students stood silently with banners addressing noise pollution near the four intersections around their schools for one hour. No slogans, no chants--just holding up banners in pure Gujarati language. Additionally, placards highlighting noise pollution and advocating for no honking were printed, with children assigned to distribute them to bystanders after stamping them. Folding the placards piqued people's curiosity, encouraging them to open and read them. The project was a resounding success! This project, initially envisioned for 52 weeks, ended up running for 153 weeks, involving 1,53,000 students across 153 schools. Based on this success, similar projects were carried out in Nadiad, Vadodara, Surat, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Gandhidham, Rajkot, and Mumbai.
Futhermore, Doshi noticed 38 discarded plastic pens in his clinic and realized that others likely had even more. This inspired him to start the 'Joy of Giving', implemented with the 3R concept--Recycle, Reproduce, and Reuse. Under this project, he launched a social media campaign requesting people to send their old or extra pens to his clinic, where he would refill and distribute them to those in need. From 2019 to June 2024, Doshi distributed over 11 lakh pens to students in need, reaching more than 3,56,000 students. He has distributed these refilled pens to all government schools in Bhavnagar, tribal schools in Dang, and even outside Gujarat to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Bengaluru.
The project has been so successful that it has expanded beyond borders, with empty pens arriving from Chicago, Virginia, and Melbourne. A refill company has supplied him with 6 lakh master refills at a minimal cost, which can be used for any pen.
In 2019, after heavy rains caused clogged drains in Bhavnagar, Doshi sent samples of the waste to a laboratory. The report revealed that the majority of the waste was plastic, especially from the cut-off corners of milk and buttermilk packets. This problem occurs when people, particularly women, open these bags, they cut off a small corner to pour out the contents. While the rest of the bag might go for recycling, but that tiny cut-off piece was discarded with regular trash, eventually making its way into drains, where it contributed to blockages.
To address this issue, Doshi initiated the 'Don't Cut the Corner' campaign in Bhavnagar. As part of this effort, he gave lectures to over 2.50 lakh students in 250 schools and colleges and also addressed the issue with women in more than 130 societies. He advised them to only make a small cut in plastic bags and not to throw away the entire cut-off corner in the trash.
After the pandemic, the streets were littered with small plastic bags, which even animals started consuming. Dr Doshi initiated the Eco Bricks campaign, where he encouraged the collection of non-recyclable plastic packets in one-litre water bottles. The bottles were to be collected and submitted to him for proper disposal.
In the first three months, only 30 bottles were collected, so Doshi introduced an incentive that would encourage participation, --three bottles for Rs10. The campaign received strong support from the Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation. Sanitation workers would gather these packets in the morning, transfer them into bottles in the afternoon, and create eco-bricks for submission. To streamline this process, 13 collection points were set up across Bhavnagar's 13 wards for bottle collection. Within a year, a total of 1 lakh 80 thousand bottles were successfully collected.
The first Eco-Brick park in India was created in Bhavnagar with the help of these bottles. The Bhavnagar Corporation allocated approximately 500 square meters of space for this project. Additionally, the Ministry of Urban Development and Urban Affairs of the Government of India acknowledged this project as the best model project in their coffee table book.
Despite the eco-brick project, small plastic packets continued to be prevalent on the streets. As a result, Tejas Doshi initiated a new project called the Cotton Bag Project. Under this initiative, he launched a campaign encouraging people to exchange 50 plastic bags for one cloth bag. Since the project began in 2022, he has distributed 1.5 lakh cloth bags and removed 75 lakh plastic packets from the community. All these bags are collected by the Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation, which then sends them to a recycling plant for use in making roads, blocks, and other materials. The entire project has received significant support from the Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation.
Doshi mentioned that he started these projects in 2014 with the help of just 14 people. Today, nearly 25 lakh people are involved. He aims to change people's habits so that society adopts an environmentally sustainable lifestyle, aligning with PM Narendra Modi's Mission LiFE. He added, "The Swachh Bharat Mission is crucial, and its results will be visible in a few years. The impact of the initiative begun by the Hon'ble Prime Minister will be felt, and it will help us gift a new India to the next generation."