City records rise in eco-friendly visarjans

Mumbai: Brihanmumbai Municipal Corpration (BMC) on Friday claimed that Ganeshotsav saw more eco-friendly immersions this year compared to the previous two years.  Officials said that visarjans in artificial ponds constituted around 10 per cent of the total immersions on an average across Mumbai, which they claim is a positive shift.

According to the BMC, 3,777 idols were immersed in artificial ponds on the last day of Ganesh Visarjan. The second day of the festival saw 14,490 idols being immersed in artificial ponds — the highest this year, followed by 7,040 immersions on the sixth day and 6, 228 immersions on the fifth day. A total of 33,925 idols were immersed in artificial ponds during the 11-day festival.

“This is a good sign as many public Mandals also opted for eco-friendly immersion, moving away from convention immersion in rivers and sea. This year, more than 580 large idols from public mandals were immersed in artificial ponds,” said a BMC official.

The BMC has also collected around 10,82,186 kilograms of nirmalya — flowers presented to Ganesha idols during celebrations — which will be processed into compost at 33 sites across all the wards.

In the western suburbs too, many devotees moved towards eco-friendly immersions, sparing the Poisar and Dahisar river which record thousands of immersion every year.

“Two of them got damaged due to heavy rains and were closed after two-three days. Yet many  came for immersion in the remaining artificial pond,” said Gopal Jhaveri, member of River March, a citizens’ group.

The group also immersed a 10-feet long idol in a artificial pond in Kandivali.

“We had also put baking soda in the tank to process the Plaster of Paris idols into  fertilizer, which can be used in nurseries and the residue can be moulded into chalk," he added.