Chennai, May 28 (BPNS)

Ranipet district of Tamil Nadu has created a world record of collecting 186.914 metric tonnes of plastic waste in a day thereby surpassing the present record held by Switzerland which is 128 mt of plastic waste. The Ranipet district administration in a statement on Saturday said that 20,000 volunteers drawn from all sections of the society collected 186.914 metric tonnes of waste within three hours on Friday. The waste collection drive commenced at 7 am on Friday.

The intensive cleaning drive was held across 288 village panchayats, 6 municipalities, and eight town panchayats in the district. Single-use plastics were recovered from residential buildings, empty plots, roads, highways, companies, and commercial establishments.

Nine adjudicators from four organizations, The Elite World Records, Asian Records Academy, Indian Records Academy, and Tamilian book of Records certified the record.

The Ranipet district collector, M. Bhaskarapandian was the driving force behind the drive. The district collector while speaking to IANS said, “ The event was held to spread the message on environment protection and that our existence is threatened due to environmental degradation. We must protect it and pass it on to the next generation.”

The district collector had earlier conducted inspections and searches across the shops and establishments and confiscated a large volume of single-use plastics. The single-use plastics that are confiscated are shredded into pieces and used for mixing in the road construction work.