Trees are for the environment, but our society has planted those beautiful trees to serve their purposes by utilizing them as a place to stick or hang posters and banners by hitting a nail through the poster into the tree. Now if just a touch for the nail’s tip might hurt us then imagine how hurtful it might be for the tree that lives with numerous nails in it. A campaign started in Bangalore called the Nails Free Trees by Vinod Kartavya, an assistant scientist from DRDO, took up this initiative to remove all the nails and staples that were embedded onto the trees around the city.

While speaking to Platocast about his work Vinod Kartavya said: “One day when I was leaning on to a tree while talking on the phone, a nail that was projected from the tree poked my head and it was painful. At that moment I thought if just one small nail hurts me, then how painful it might for the tree!”

Since that one experience, Vinod started checking on other trees which had these posters with around ten to fifteen nails and a countless number of staples pinned on to these trees. “Ever since then I decided that we shouldn’t stop here and we should remove all the nails and staples all around Bangalore.” Accompanied by some of his friends and colleagues, Vinod has made sure that every Sunday he takes up this initiative in creating awareness removing these embedded nails from the trees.

Every Sunday, they remove around 40-50 nails from these trees and discard these posters. “We saw that, in a stretch of KG road, starting from Corporation Circle to Mysore Bank, there are around 25 to 30 trees which have been nailed and stapled, if you observe closely, around thousands of staples pins for each tree, and it stretches to all those 25 to 30 trees on that road. So, joined by some more of my friends we have cleared around 7 trees in that road, and coming Sunday we have planned to move forward by removing nails and staples from as many trees possible.”

Vinod Kartavya has started this campaign on social media and asked for a Nails Free Tree Challenge. Those who take up this challenge will remove the nails from the trees and post a picture with the hashtag #nailsfreetree. As Vinod Kartavya points out, as per the tree preservation act and the Bangalore municipal act, it is illegal to nail a poster on the tree as well as harm it. He has also tagged several celebrities and political people to highlight this challenge and create a significant amount of awareness.