‘Cold Play’ Concert Generates Heated Debate Over Garbage Trail

Mumbai: Audience at the world-famous ColdPlay music concert held in Navi Mumbai left garbage, predominantly plastic bottles and tumblers, which the city civic teams cleared working till 3 AM on Sunday.

Branding the concert as a zero-waste event, Navi Mumbai Municipal Corpora-tion (NMMC), has pressed a team of 150 Parisar Sakhi (area friends) into ser-vice to separate the garbage.

At the end of the concert at 10 PM, the civic teams got into action at the stadi-um and the roads around it with their deep cleaning drive.

“The morning walkers and joggers were pleasantly surprised seeing the area spick and span even after 75,000 people gathered at the event,” a civic official said.

NMMC Commissioner Dr Kailas Shinde personally monitored the zero waste drive to maintain the clean city image.

Navi Mumbai maintained the number three position in the Swachh Bharat rankings and the civic body has set eyes on the Number 1 ranking this year. Talking to Bizz Buzz, NatConnect Foundation director B N Kumar regretted that the audience at the concert that had tickets priced at thousands of rupees did not bother about cleanliness. They ought to have collected their own gar-bage and disposed of it in the bins, Kumar said and lamented: But who cares for cleanliness!

Kharghar-based activist Jyoti Nadkarni pointed out that the crowd at such a concert is supposed to be elite, educated and modern. Their attitude towards garbage is appalling, she said.

The garbage collected in the ColdPlay concert area also included wrappers, papers and food item containers, a civic official said.

The drive will continue till the last day of the concert on January 21. Social activist Madhu Shankar termed the crowd behaviour as dirty play with the environment.

As much as nine tonnes of garbage, including five tonnes of dry, has been col-lected from outside the stadium, Dr Ajay Gadade, deputy commissioner - solid waste management division, confirmed.

The process of collecting and segregating the garbage inside the stadi-um is being done by Bookmyshow, he said. The process is still on.