Turning floral waste into incense sticks to save Ganges river in India

The Ganges is India's holiest river and a lifeline for hundreds of millions living on its banks for generations.

But the river remains a paradox, deeply revered by millions but also among the world's most polluted, carrying sewage, chemical effluents, industrial and domestic waste, dead carcasses and millions of tonnes of floral waste. 

Traditionally Indians offer flowers at temples as a mark of purity and sacredness to the gods, and the sheer quantity of waste generated by those flowers from various temples is overwhelming. Every year, Indians dump about eight million tonnes (8.8 tons) of waste flowers loaded with pesticides and insecticides into various water bodies, destroying their fragile eco-system.

Ankit Agarwal, a young entrepreneur in the northern Kanpur city, which lies on the banks of the Ganges, is helping minimize that damage by collecting tonnes of flower waste and repurposing it into incense sticks and recyclable paper that can be planted as seeds after use.

Agarwal was inspired to act several years ago when he observed hundreds of people bathing in the dirty slushy waters of the Ganges. He noticed bubbles bursting and water reacting to a dump of floral waste being unloaded by a truck.

"Hardly does anyone think that what happens to these flowers afterwards. Sadly, these sacred flowers are dumped into water bodies like the River Ganges to respect their sanctity," said 30-year-old Agarwal, who founded his company Phool (the Hindi word for "flower") in 2017. 

At Phool, the discarded flowers are collected from the temples and banks of the Ganges directly, then brought to Phool's factory, where the pesticides and chemicals are washed off, and the floral pulp is converted into incense sticks, incense cones, and "gulal" (colored powders used in rituals). The packages of Phool's products are biodegradable and infused with Holy Basil seeds, a trademark that Agarwal says helped establish Phool's brand.

Phool now employs over 100 workers, mostly women, at its factory in Kanpur and business has been growing steadily, even during the pandemic. 

Agarwal said he was also working on creating other biodegradable materials from floral waste- one of them being a green alternative to styrofoam that decomposes in less than a month, and a form of leather that he calls "fleather". He said he was in talks with some leading European fashion houses for exclusive contracts to supply "fleather" for the manufacturing hand bags and other items.

(Source: Reuters)

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