The India Clean-Up Confluence was a first of its kind event organised where leaders from clean-up movements, government bodies, corporations, and the public came together to initiate dialogue and foster collaboration on sustainable solutions for a cleaner, healthier environment. Actor and UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador Dia Mirza, as the founder of One India Stories partnered with India Clean Up Confluence (organised by Carter Cleanup and Greenmyna). During this time, Dia spoke to us about why a single event was essential to bring about change in India.
Crazy people who can’t sit still
“There are several clean up groups which are largely volunteer citizen and youth led groups. Many of the founders of those clean up groups are just crazy people who can’t sit still when they see something wrong and they get up and start doing the work themselves. And that’s what’s attracted the community that now continues to work and support them. And I can name so many of them, whether it’s Harold who started Carter Clean-up, Afroz who started Versova Beach Cleanup, or the Plog man of India, Ripu, or Pradeep Sangwan, founder of Healing Himalayas, that works to preserve the Himalayas and promote responsible tourism. So every person who’s started the movement has done so because they’ve seen an issue in their neighbourhood, backyard or region and said that they want to be part of the solution.
Now, a lot of people say clean-ups are not the answer, and the industry needs to take more cognizance of the kind of waste they’re generating. The plastics industry needs to put the tap on plastics. Yes, all of that is true. But the kind of environmental consciousness clean-ups generate, nothing else can. Because when young people start going and becoming a part of clean-ups, there is a conscious shift in them- they start noticing every chips or biscuit wrapper that they are using, and think about how they can be less wasteful, how can they innovate and come up with solutions.
The confluence has been set up with the aim that these stakeholders, these people across the country who are doing all this phenomenal work, get one place to meet annually or biannually or as many times as they so choose to, to share their problems, to identify solutions that are working and scale them,” Dia explained in detail.
Environmental origins
Dia also recently received the Wildlife Advocate of the Year award and was appointed as jury for ALT Environmental Film Festival. But this concern for the environment isn’t a new found fad for the actress, rather its something she grew up with. Dia’s mother detested plastics and they would store everything in tin, metal or glass jars.
The alcohol bottles were used to store drinking water. No plastic bags were ever used, and her mother didn’t even let her play with plastic dolls as a child, so she never had a Barbie. Even the school she went to held many classes outdoors under big trees, making the students interact with nature on a daily basis.
All this made her deeply aware that one’s behaviour, choices, actions, impact everyone, everywhere. Then when she became an actor and started working in films, Dia was also associated with various social organisations, which is when she realised that mainstream society and media is just not focusing on environmental health and climate action. That is when she realised that she needs to be the conduit between the remarkable stories of people who are doing the work on the ground and hopefully through her own choices and her own learning and growth, inspire a conscious shift perfectly.
In the editor’s shoes
With the recent spate of re-releases on cinemas, her romantic debut, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein also was back in theatres, 23 years after it was originally released. On the OTT front, she was seen in Anubhav Sinha’s web series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack, where she played the editor of a newspaper covering the incident, who on certain occasions is seen disagreeing with a journalist reporting on the hijack and the politics involved.
How did she prepare for that role and did she realise anything new about the media industry?
“I spoke to a lot of my female journalist friends who were in newsrooms at the time, and I was very curious to know what was the power role those days and how much has changed. The one thing that I understood was that not much has changed, newsrooms are still largely controlled by men, with very few women who are in positions of authority.
The ones who were there, have their own stories to tell. One friend of mine spoke about how she was nine months pregnant and she got a call at 3:30 am to drive into the office to read the news because the whole hijack had taken place. Another friend spoke about how she didn’t go back home for 56 hours because they were tracking the news and they were trying to just get more details out and understand and make sense of what was happening. When you invest time in discovering the real stories of real people who were in the situation, it helps you not only connect more deeply with the character that you are essaying, but it just improves your own understanding of what shapes our world and people in certain spaces,” Dia concluded.
