Idol immersion goes green, fewer leftovers this yr
Mumbai A day after Ganesh visarjan, environmentalists say their go green mantra seems to have struck a chord with the devotees. Even though the number of immersions increased this year, the green brigade noticed a marked drop in the collection of plaster-of-Paris idols as well as other non-biodegradable offerings in the citys beaches and lakes.
Our efforts for the past seven years to educate people to bring home clay Ganesh idols seems to be showing results. This year, it took us just four hours to clean up about eight km stretch of Juhu beach, which would usually take more than 7 hours, said Anand Pednekar of the NGO Sprouts. This, he said, was good news considering that the total Ganesh immersions had increased this year in comparison to the past years, according to BMC data.
Mumbai saw a total of 1,91,072 Ganesh immersions (10,354 public mandal idols and 1,80,718 household idols) on Wednesday. The numbers were up from last year 1,79,123 idols. Sprouts involved students of Vile Parle and Andheri colleges Mithibai, Ismail Yusuf and Bhavan colleges to clean up the Juhu stretch. Nearly 125 students and other volunteers worked from 7 am to 11 am.
The cleaning activity was conducted with the help of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and the remnants of PoP, thermocol, decoration fished out from the water were handed over to the department, Pednekar said. Sprouts pulled out about 20 truckloads visarjan offerings including idols, floral offerings (nirmalya), non-biodegradable decorations, thermocol and plastic items. Overall, the volume this year had gone down by 50 per cent but a large amount of collection was done from the southern end of Juhu beach, Pednekar said.
At Powai, nearly 400 volunteers, including 200 students from suburban schools and members of the NGO Young Environmentalists joined to clean up 20 kg of floral offering from the two visarjan spots at the lake. With BMCs cooperation, 20 large bags of nirmalya and 10 bags of non-biodegradable offerings were collected.
At Powai, students from four schools Childrens Academy, Kandivli, Kendra Vidyalaya IIT-Powai, S M Shetty High School and the St Xaviers, Bahndup joined the cleanup drive.
The BMC collected 3,200 metric tonnes of bio-degradable waste in the form of nirmalya and prasad . About 1,200 trucks were pressed into service during the 10-day festival. Out of the total waste generated, 200 metric tones were generated on the Wednesday alone. Oen hundred and eighty nirmalya kalash were placed at the various immersion spots.
In addition to a total of 60 natural spots for visarjan, the BMC had created 19 artificial ponds. Devotees had immersed 13,866 idols (300 public and 13,566 household) in the artificial ponds, up from last years 9000, BMC sources said.