Silchar youths take up #Trashtag Challenge

In a welcome deparature from disturbing and potentially dangerous internet trends like the ‘MOMO Challenge’, netizens around the globe are now posting photos of the #Trashtag Challenge. The challenge has inspired people to go out to a location dumped with garbage, clean that area and post ‘before & after’ images of the location.

The challenge is thought to have been started by an international gear company UCO Gear in 2015 but since then fell off in popularity. Recently a post by Byron Roman (an officer in Phoenix) on Facebook reignited the challenge as he encouraged ‘bored’ youths to get outside and clean their locality.

Youths from Silchar has also accepted this challenge and on Sunday morning, cleaned an area near Silchar Medical College that was dumped with garbage from past many months.

Speaking to us, a member of the Team ‘Swachh Silchar’ who took the challenge, Pradeep Das said, “We are a group of 8 students, Arunabha Singh Bhattacharjee, Konkan Nath Choudhury, Baishali Duttaroy, Subhadip Roy, Pritam Das, Pratyujwal Nath, Samata Paul and me. We are carrying out cleanliness drive in Silchar since July last year. But this time we get inspired from the Arizonian man who actually started the Trash campaign. As we love taking swachhata challenge, so without giving any second we agreed and decided to do this today. We selected a location near Silchar Medical College and cleaned the garbage dumped there. We collected the trash in 23 bags and later dumped it in the trenching ground. Also we don’t want the trend to start and end with us, so going bit different we nominated two groups of Silchar, The Commoner NGO and Leo Club of Silchar Central to carry forward the challenge. We hope they will also nominate others as well”