Surakimu Diyaluma

Diyaluma falls is a tourist attractive place in Sri Lanka. Because of irregular garbage disposal, the beauty of this area has started destroying. Diyaluma Surakimu, a project which was organized by Rotaract club of Badulla was focused on to clean Diyaluma area and to create and awareness about protecting its beauty. It was not a normal cleanup program. It was always focused on the sustainability and efficiency. Through this project, we tried to create polythene and plastic free Diyaluma. In this project plastics, glass and paper garbage were collected by us according to "Recover" guidelines given by the Environment service team of Rotaract District 3220. 20 kg of Glass, 3.7 kg of plastic and little amount of paper garbage were collected in here and those were handed over to the Municipal council of Bandarawela, as they sustainably recycle them. Gloves were used all the times for the safeguard of the participants and woven sacks were used as garbage bags in order to not to give more polythene to the environment. It was a successful project and we are planning to continue this initiative.

 

Here we focused the area of Diyaluma falls for cleanup programs. Our aim was to collect polythene, plastic, organic and metals garbage from the particular area (which was disposed by tourists and locals who visit the area) and hand over them for recycling. Members of Rotaract club of Badulla Rtr.Mihiri and Rtr.Vimukthi participated for the session “How to recover “organized by the environment service team of Rotaract District 3220 and gained knowledge on how to properly organize a clean –up program. We used that knowledge throughout the event. Rtr.PP Himantha was informed and contacted throughout the planning and all the planning were done according to “Recover” guidelines. Municipal council of Bandarawela was contacted by Rtr.Hasini for the sustainable disposal of Garbage. We avoided using garbage bags and instead we used Gunny bags/Woven sacks for garbage collecting. Through that we avoided disposing polythene to the environment. We collected the garbage separately using labeled gunny bags. We asked the community to join us and they accepted our invitation pleasurably. We tried to aware the community about the garbage disposal and the importance of a polythene free environment.

Throughout this project, we tried to build a better interconnection among the community. We talked with them and got their ideas for the project. They joined us and worked together throughout the project.

As for the Scope for Improvement, we take this as a beginning and we hope to do several cleanup projects targeting several areas. Especially because of the heavy rains prevailed in the area , upper Diyaluma cleanup was not up to our satisfaction, therefore we hope to organize some cleanups in future on dry days, to reach places that are not readily available to clean.