How Bikers Troop Bengaluru turns weekend rides into trail cleanups

A ride that turned into a cleanup

Bikers Troop Bengaluru started the way many Indian motorcycle clubs do, as a WhatsApp group after a weekend ride. Harshith BK and Priya Pujari set it up on 23 October 2020 after a trip to Skandagiri, about 70 km from the city, where they found the hillside littered with plastic bottles, according to the club's own website. They picked up what they could that day and decided they needed a bigger group to do it properly.

Thirteen riders joined that first circle. The club now counts 250 members, Outlook India reported in a feature on the group, and by January 2023 it had logged 105 group rides in its first two years, per the club's own figures on its website.

Quarterly drives, hundreds of kilos of plastic

What sets Bikers Troop Bengaluru apart from a typical weekend riding group is the quarterly cleanup ride. Members pick a trekking or tourist spot within a few hours of the city, ride there in a convoy, then spend the morning in gloves filling garbage bags instead of posing for photographs.

Deccan Herald reported on one such Sunday drive to Shivagange hill near Dobbaspet, about 50 km from Bengaluru, where close to 50 Bengalureans on 30 bikes and five cars removed more than 200 kg of plastic waste from the slope. The same report said the group had collected close to 180 kg of plastic from Shivagange in a similar drive the year before, and more than 300 kg of waste from T K Falls near Kanakapura in February.

The waste is segregated on site and handed over to the local gram panchayat or government officials for recycling, Deccan Herald reported. On an earlier drive to Shivagange, the club worked with 15 students from the Siddaganga Institute of Technology in Tumkur and cleared over 150 kg of bottles, Outlook India reported, and a trip to Avalabetta turned up thousands more discarded bottles, according to seepositive.in.

From 13 riders to 250

The club's growth mirrors a pattern across Bengaluru's riding scene, where groups built on Instagram and WhatsApp scale from a handful of friends to a few hundred members without ever filing for a formal registration. Harshith BK has said the club does not gatekeep by brand of motorcycle or riding experience. "Anyone who wants to help us is more than welcome," he told seepositive.in, speaking about participation in the cleanup drives rather than membership of the riding group itself.

For a Bengaluru rider deciding which weekend group to join, Bikers Troop Bengaluru is a reminder that some of the city's clubs now measure themselves by kilos of plastic cleared as much as by kilometres ridden. Riders heading to Shivagange, Avalabetta or similar Western Ghats day trips can expect to find the group's cleanup drives happening on a quarterly cycle, open to anyone willing to carry a garbage bag alongside a helmet.

Sources

• Bikers Troop Bengaluru, official site
• Outlook India: Bikers Troop Bengaluru: Riders On A Mission
• Deccan Herald: Blureans clear 200 kg waste from trek site
• seepositive.in: Bengaluru Bikers Troop is a group of environmentally conscious bikers and is now on a mission