Youth Work toward Creating Shelter for Stray Dogs Using Plastic Waste

A group of young environment lovers have come together and have used their free time to create a home for stray dogs by using their unique and innovative idea. They have made use of plastic to make bottle bricks. 

Environment lovers residing in Navi Mumbai, India named Vasundhara Gupte and Khushi Shah have made a group called the “Urvari”. The group conducts social environment-related activities. This group started its first activity in 2019 by planting 10 trees every weekend. However, they had to stop their work for a while because of the Covid-19 lockdown.

The group had a brainstorming session on how they should resume work amid the Covid-19 restrictions. Last year, the group then thought of an idea about making shelter homes for the stray dogs in their vicinity. After experimenting a bit, the group shared a post on social media requesting people to not waste plastic bottles but to send it to them.

While speaking to Hindustan Times, Vasundhara stated that last year, in the month of June, they had taken up small eco brick projects to make homes for stray animals and help them during the monsoon. The Urvari group approached college students through social media in order to prepare eco-bricks at their homes and drop them off at one of their stations across the city.

The groups received more than 100 bricks from volunteers. They require more than 150 plastic bricks in order to create one shelter. Once the shelter was ready, they placed it at the Rajiv Gandhi Udyan, Sector 29 in Vashi. The shelter was placed there after the group received permission from the municipal corporator of the area.

Currently, the group is conducting this project on a larger scale and is planning on building a few more shelters in the coming weeks. Vasundhara mentioned that there is so much plastic that is not recycled and is being wasted. This plastic waste is sometimes accidentally consumed by street animals. Hence, they have requested people to donate plastic for a good cause rather than putting it to waste.

Vasundhara further stated that they used to earlier make dustbins and several other daily use objects using plastic bottles. The animal shelter made using plastic is their gift to the stray ones who do not have any shelter during heavy rains.