The movement behind ICUC

Carter Clean Up

A citizens' clean-up movement on Carter Road, Bandra. 3.5 km of beach and mangroves, every Saturday since June 2021. 10,000 volunteers. 160,000 kg of waste off the shore.

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How it started

Started by one person during lockdown

Harold Fernandes cleaned the Carter Road beach and its adjoining mangroves nearly every day through the lockdown. On 24 June 2021 four others joined him and Carter Clean Up was founded: Ashwin Malwade, Nupur Agarwal, Freishia B and Maansi Desai.

The stretch is 3.5 km of beach and mangroves in Bandra. No single authority maintains it. Plastic and illegally dumped construction debris collect on the sand, and the mangroves choke on it until trees start dying back.

Four years on: 10,000 volunteers, 160,000 kg removed, and a clean-up every Saturday. Waste is segregated on site. Plastic that cannot be recycled goes to cement factories as refuse-derived fuel. Idols left on the beach go to a recycling unit every two months. Seven Bandra churches host dry-waste bins emptied weekly, and around 75 residents bring their recyclables to Carter Road each Saturday.

The limit showed up early. One community can hold one shoreline, not a coastline. Carter Clean Up started the India Clean-Up Confluence in 2024 to put every clean-up movement in the country in one room.

Recognition

Recognised by the Indian Coast Guard on their 48th Raising Day
Spotlightee 2023 at the Sanctuary Wildlife Awards, Sanctuary Asia

By the numbers

What one beach adds up to

Carter Road, Bandra — cumulative since the movement was founded on 24 June 2021.

3.5 km
Shoreline: 10,000+
Volunteers: 1,60,000 kg
Waste collected: 7
Waste banks

The founders

The people who started it

Carter Clean Up was founded by five citizens on 24 June 2021. Two of them tell the story of how it runs.

Freishia Bomanbehram
Co-founder
Freishia co-founded Carter Clean Up in 2021 and has carried its public voice ever since. She is the one who puts a Saturday morning on a beach in front of an audience that was never going to come looking for it.
She is an actor, emcee and event specialist with more than a decade of work behind her, Earth Hour Water Ambassador for Maharashtra with WWF-India, EEMA Best Emcee (Gold), and a two-time Power Women Award winner as a Champion of Change in Events.
Maansi Desai
Co-founder
Maansi co-founded Carter Clean Up on 24 June 2021, and was part of turning one person's daily walk into a weekly operation across the full 3.5-kilometre stretch.
Holding a clean-up every single Saturday for years is mostly logistics: volunteers, equipment, and somewhere for the waste to actually go. That machinery is the reason the movement outlasted its first summer.

Carter Clean Up was co-founded with Ashwin Malwade and Nupur Agarwal.

From the drives

Saturday mornings on Carter Road

Who backs the movement

The people who showed up with us

Carter Clean Up started the India Clean-Up Confluence, and these are the organisations that have funded and supported it since — the same names behind both editions.