“It’s strange how quickly we get used to things.
Every day on my way to work, I would pass the road outside the Infosys SEZ Main Gate. Plastic wrappers, bottles, cigarette butts, food packaging, and other litter could often be seen along the roadside.
I noticed it.
Most people probably did.
But after seeing it every day, it became easy to walk past it and move on.
That realization bothered me.
This weekend, a few of us decided not to walk past it anymore.
As part of Hyderabad CSR Mamata, around 15 volunteers and employees came together for a plogging drive. With gloves and garbage bags in hand, we spent more than two hours walking through the public spaces around the campus, collecting waste that had accumulated over time.
At first, it felt like a small effort. Then the bags started filling up.
Plastic straws. Single-use sachets. Cigarette butts. Tetra packs. Food wrappers. Bottles. The weirdest things to pick up were from birthday celebrations—stuff like cake boxes, plastic ribbons, and candles. They were used for a few moments of joy, but just left behind long after the party was over.
The more we picked up, the more waste we found.
By the end of the drive, we had collected over 300 kilograms of waste and filled nearly 25 bags.
What surprised me wasn’t just the quantity. It was the difference it made. A stretch of road that many of us use every day looked cleaner and more welcoming. It reminded me how much can be achieved when people come together with a shared sense of responsibility.
People passing by slowed down to watch. Some stopped to ask what we were doing. I hope it encouraged at least a few people to think about the waste we generate and where it ends up.
One cleanup drive won’t solve a larger environmental problem. But it reminded me that clean public spaces don’t happen by accident. They happen when people take ownership of the places they use every day.
The environment doesn’t need a handful of people doing sustainability perfectly. It needs millions of people doing it imperfectly, but consistently.
For a few hours that weekend, we chose to stop treating it as somebody else’s problem. We just showed up and did our part.”
— Sumanth Vallala