The News Minute | February 15, 2015 | 7.02 pm ISTStudents from a college in Mangaluru have taken it upon themselves to attempt to clean up the small coastal city, starting with the beach. Of all the things you might normally find at a dirty beach, empty bottles of alcohol are top of the list.On Saturday, students from a hotel management college in the city organized themselves into a group of volunteers at turned up at Thannir Bhavi beach at 8.30 am. Three hours later, they had collected over 800 bottles of alcohol, mostly beer bottles and Breezer bottles.Lecturer at the college Rakshit Rao said that they had found 400 bottles of beer, 350 bottles of Bacardi Breezer and 50 other alcohol bottles which are now empty of their contents. After selling them to scrap dealers, they got Rs 1,200 for the bottles and will give that money to charities working with HIV positive children, he says.Asked about the lack of dustbins in most public places, Rao said: “Swachh Bharat campaign has been carried out in many places in the city, but people don’t follow it (after it is over). The least people can do is to keep the waste materials like plastics and paper in their bags until they come across a dustbin.”Sammilan Shetty, another lecturer at the college said that they found plastic and other waste too, but they were surprised by the sheer number of alcohol bottles they found. What was even more surprising was the sheer number of broken glass they found at the beach. He said that the broken glass bottles and glass pieces they found weighed around 40 kg and added: “Throwing empty alcohol bottles is bad enough, but people even broke bottles which can hurt people.”A student who volunteered for the clean up said that they planned to keep at cleaning up the city and that what was needed was a public presence. “We did it at the beach where there was nobody. If we do it on the streets or any other place where there are people, it will send a message to them to keep the city clean,” says Surendra Shetty, a second year student.Tweet