Bengalureans to Bring Eco-friendly ‘Bappa’ at Home This Ganesh Chaturthi | Here’s How to Make – News18

Sep 16, 2023 Divya Bharat

The people of Bengaluru bring Lord Ganesha at home every year with great pride and joy during Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. Nowadays, there is an increasing awareness about the impact these idols have on the environment as they are immersed in water bodies once the 10-day festivities are completed.

Idols, especially if the idols are made of POP (Plaster of Paris) and painted, pollute water with their harmful chemicals. In view of this, the people of Bengaluru are opting for eco-friendly idols made with natural clay and without paint. People either buy such idols from local markets or online or make them at their own homes or in their community.

You get numerous brands of “seed bomb” Ganesha kits, where you can even use the immersion clay to grow a plant at home. People are also increasingly opting to do the immersion or “visarjan” at home in buckets.

Green Utsav, founded by Rishita Sharma and Meena Subramanian conducts workshops close to the festival dates in Bengaluru for schools, corporates, and apartment complexes, where they teach people to make their own eco-friendly Ganeshas.

In the nearly 10 workshops that had been planned over the weekend, over 240 Ganeshas were expected to be made by people across age groups. “We get traditional potters and artisans to teach people to make their own Ganesha. We also create awareness about having a zero-waste festival,” says Rishita.

These community engagement efforts encourage people to use cloth and plastic-based decorations that can be reused, recycled, or up-cycled. “Otherwise people tend to also throw away all the natural flower decoration, in polythene bags, when they go for visarjan to the lakes, which can be easily avoided.” At the workshops also, they make a conscious effort not to generate waste. They also create awareness among apartment communities to BYOC – bring your own container – cups, boxes, or bottles from home to collect “prasadam” at the community celebrations, so that disposables can be avoided.

For the first time, a new experiment is being conducted in Bengaluru by Pune-based eCoexist Foundation, along with Bengaluru-based Hasiru Dala. They have launched the Punaravartan Campaign to collect and recycle natural clay, after the idol immersion, for recycling.

Pre-Covid, Bengaluru usually would see over 1.2 lakh idols being immersed in its tanks every year, according to research they have shared online. Manisha Sheth, founder of eCoextist said the campaign was born out of the idea that this is a very respectful way of treating material that people have worshipped and are emotionally attached to.

“We have tied up with Hasiru Dala as they already have a strong presence in Bengaluru and well-established Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCC) where citizens can drop off the clay,” Sheth said.

In 2013, the Central Pollution Control Board issued guidelines banning the use of Plaster of Paris (PoP) in idol making. While all States try to implement it, the crackdown has not been very stringent.

Bianca Fernandes, Information-Education-Communication Manager for Hasiru Dala says their existing network of 37 DWCC locations across the city will be the key collection points and they hope people will be open to this concept. They are running social media campaigns to create awareness among the public to participate. They hope to tie up with artists, architects and sculptors to reuse such clay in the future.

It was the horrifying sight of dismembered Ganesha idols over 7 years ago, a few days after immersion in the city’s Sankey Tank, which prompted 69-year-old Lakshmi Phadke, a Malleswaram resident to decide they would buy only clay Ganesha idols for their home celebrations, without any paint, and do the immersion at home. “I have a separate bucket reserved for the yearly visarjan. I later water my plants with it over a few days, after the clay breaks down,” she said.

Ever since he was in Class 6, every year almost, 27-year-old ceramic artist Shivu Mahesh has been making 3 clay Ganeshas at home – one for his home and two for his aunts.