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Since 1998, Thanal became more involved in Toxics, especially with the work on Plastics, Waste and Pesticides and their impact
on human and natural life. This came about after our interactions with Nithyanand Jayaraman, then in Greenpeace and also
with the International POP's Elimination Network (IPEN). S Usha, a horticulturist by profession and inspired by the works
of Rachel Carson leads our toxics programme and Pesticides have hence been one of the very important areas of our work. By
1999 our involvement with the case of endosulfan spraying in Kasaragod took most of our focus. Our work with the local community
as well as networks all over the world helped highlight this issue and today Kerala has banned the chemical and we are working
towards a review of the pesticide use policy in the country, through the Community Action for Pesticide Elimination (CAPE),
a result of the work on Endosulfan. Waste and incineration was another issue we grappled with and this started off a series
of work ending up with the Zero Waste Programme in Kovalam, a work which is growing up and taking a large portion of our efforts.
In the same year, we also started to interact with the local community in Eloor, a chemical hotspot in Kerala, to understand
and intervene. Eloor is host to the only DDT plant in India and is a POPs source.
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