Students make green Ganpati idols

MUMBAI: Bringing in the festive season early, school students gathered at Powai last week to make 200 eco-friendly idols using mud from the Powai lake and Mithi

MUMBAI: Bringing in the festive season early, school students gathered at Powai last week to make 200 eco-friendly idols using mud from the Powai lake and Mithi river.

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The students — from Children’s Academy in Malad, Powai English School, Hiranandani Foundation School in Powai and six other schools — gathered at a hotel to make mud idols that dissolve easily, causing less damage to aquatic ecosystems.

They said their families will use these idols instead of buying new ones for Ganeshotsav, which will be celebrated next month.

“The idea was to inform students of the environmental damage caused by Plaster of Paris (PoP) and thermocol idols immersed every year at Mumbai’s beaches,” said Elsie Gabriel, founder of the non-governmental organisation Young Environmentalists Programme (YEP) that organised the event.

“Making clay idols is an ancient craft and a tradition, which should be revived in cities to get in touch with our ecological roots.”

Gabriel said they collected about 40kg silt from the Powai lake and Mithi river. It was sieved, cured and mixed with garden clay before being moulded into idols.

“It was a therapeutic experience and an expression of art for these young environmentalists,” said Ravi Arora, a Powai resident, whose son participated.

Ganeshotsav puts a lot of strain on Mumbai’s coastal seas and inland water bodies. Last year, over two lakh idols were immersed, leaving 3,059 metric tons of waste on the city’s beaches — roughly the amount of garbage sent to the Deonar dumping ground daily.

The children learnt to make the idols in seven simple steps. They were first asked to mould the torso, followed by the head with the mukut (crown), one hand holding the modak (sweet) and the other hand raised in blessing.

“The children were asked to embed the idols with seeds so that they could be immersed at [makeshift ponds] in gardens and plants could be grown,” said Tanya Satish, director, YEP. “They used only eco-friendly decorations such as flowers and wood shavings.”

Later, students took part in a competition to select the best idol. “I made a small idol, which will have less impact on water bodies,” said Preetham Jain, 12, a student at Children’s Academy who won the competition.

After the festive season, Powai residents will collect all the nirmalaya (flower waste) for recycling through composting from the immersion site at Powai lake.