Make Ganpati festival eco-friendy, says activists

Mumbai: With the Ganesha Chaturthi festival a month away, activists have emphasized upon the need to encourage clay-based Ganesha idols and carrying out ‘visarjan’ in artificial ponds at residential societies or pandals, rather than doing it in the sea. Every year, post ‘visarjan’, the city beaches are inundated with Ganesha idols that washes ashore.

Activists have highlighted that the bigger mandals should encourage environment-friendly celebrations and set an example for others.

“Residential societies and mandals should encourage doing immersion of idols in the small artificial ponds. If they use idols made of clay or mud, they can dissolve it in these artificial ponds, rather than sea or lakes. The dissolved mud can be used in the garden and pots for plants,” said Sunish Subramanian, secretary of Plant and Animals Welfare Society (PAWS)-Mumbai, an NGO working towards creating awareness about eco-friendly ganpati festival for years.

Meanwhile, environmentalists have also highlighted the need of notifying silence zones before the festival as every year the celebration amounts to more than 100 decibels of noise at famous places. “In 2009 when the silence zones were first notified, the authorities identified around 1500 silence zones in one week, and since last year only 110 silence zones have been identified till now. The state government and the civic body need to be more sensitive towards the issue of noise pollution,” said Sumaira Abdulali, founder of Awaaz Foundation. Ms. Abdulali also stated that since the definition of ‘Silence Zone’ has not changed even under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Amendment Rules, 2017, the earlier silence zones could still be notified.

According to the amended notification, “An area comprising not less than 100 metres around hospitals, educational institutions and courts may be declared by the state government as silence area or  zones.”