Navi Mumbai: What started has a small initiative by a 37 year old Nerul resident Dharmesh Barai, during lockdown with the help of four friends, has now gradually become a momentum among many Navi Mumbaikars with almost 60,000 people across the city joining in as volunteers in various mangrove clean-up drives. Team Environment Life Foundation had their 200th Week of Mangroves Cleanup Drive on Sunday at Cidco proposed ground near Sarsole Jetty at Sec 6 in Nerul. Dharmesh Barai, a resident of Nerul, who had shifted from Kamothe in 2020 had visited Shiv Temple at Karave jetty and found it painful to see the sight of the mangroves around the temple surrounded by waste.

That was the time when he decided to do something to clear this. On August 15, 2020, Barai had his first drive with Rohan Bhosale, Shriram Shankar, Aman Gupta and Rahul Rahkar. Barari had started ‘The ‘Environment Life’ in 2008 as a college student and had taken up many plantation and waterfall clean up drives since then.

But it was on August 2020, when ‘Mangrove soldiers’ of ‘Team Environment Life’ was initiated. Since then local citizens, NGOs corporates as well as government officials have taken part in this initiative. On the drive that happened on Sunday, Sameer Wankhede (IRS) was the chief guest.

After the drive, Wankhede posted on ‘X’ - As much as I believe in cleaning drugs from the society which is also a part of my duty, I believe that it is of vital importance to save our environment by .