Surendra Singh Choudhary, the Indian man who spent eight months cleaning a rubbish-filled river largely on his own, has returned to find plastic bags and other waste accumulating along its banks again.
The 21-year-old, more popularly known by his online moniker Bittu Tabahi, began cleaning the Ajnar river in Madhya Pradesh in January.
What began as an effort with a few friends gradually became a largely solo undertaking, with the student removing plastic, bottles, algae, and sludge from the water using basic tools and his own hands.
His work eventually brought him national and international attention, including praise from industrialist Anand Mahindra and an invitation to work with Boyan Slat, founder of the Dutch environmental organisation The Ocean Cleanup.
However, in a new video posted on social media, Mr Choudhary showed that rubbish had accumulated along the riverbanks again, with plastic bags and other waste floating in the water just weeks after his clean-up.
In the video, one can see the water dotted with plastic, discarded cloth, and flowers, as well pieces of thermocol – a lightweight polystyrene foam commonly used in packaging – floating among the rubbish.
“I never imagined that some people would undo eight months of my hard work like this,” he says in Hindi in the video. “You can see for yourselves how badly people have polluted the river again.”
In the video, Mr Choudhary explains that he brings his equipment whenever he returns to clean the river, starting by putting on gloves to protect himself. He then clears the rubbish accumulated around the steps leading down to the water, before turning his attention to the waste floating further into the river.
“I have cleared the rubbish near the steps, but I also need to remove the waste from inside the river,” he says. “To do that, I carefully get into the water to protect myself, and I don’t even know how to swim.”
Mr Choudhary spent around Rs 30,000 (£233) of his own money on the clean-up, including equipment and dustbins installed along the river, he told The Times of India.
Initially, he had hoped to build a machine to remove the rubbish but could not afford one. “I am a student. So I thought, I will clean as much as I can with my own hands,” he told The Indian Express.
The work also took a physical toll, with Mr Choudhary telling the newspaper that repeated contact with the polluted water had caused infections and peeling skin on his hands and feet.
Mr Choudhary has since taken his clean-up campaign beyond his hometown through his #CleanWithBittu initiative.
On 20 September, he joined volunteers to clear a stretch of the Yamuna riverbank in the capital Delhi, collecting 585kg of waste in four and a half hours.
The campaign continued in Gurugram, a city on the outskirts of the capital Delhi, where his team removed 2,435kg of rubbish, with local residents also joining the effort. The three-day campaign ended in Noida, a planned city in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, which forms part of the wider Delhi metropolitan area.
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