Greens appeal for eco-friendly Ganesh festival

Mumbai: To promote an ecofriendly Ganesh festival this year, beach campaigners and activists are requesting citizens to favour sustainable idols over Plaster of Paris idols painted with chemicals. They say that beaches such as Dadar and Worli which used to be inundated with Lord Ganesh idols, have seen improvement over the past two years.

Chinu Jeet Kwatra, who has been spearheading regular cleanup drives at Dadar beach, said that during Ganesh Chaturthi, their campaign would be largely towards encou-raging citizens to use artificial ponds.

“We will be launching the campaign ‘Go Green Ganesha’, where we ask people to celebrate the festival in an eco-friendly way. During the festival period, households will be asked to use only sustainable idols and discard the use of plastic and thermocol in decoration. Participants will be rewarded accordingly,” said Mr Kwatra.

The group will also initiate a ten-day cleanup drive at Dadar beach post the festival to free the beach of idols and decorative items washed ashore.

“During immersion days, our volunteers will be there on ground requesting people to im-merse in artificial ponds located at a safe distance from the beach,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park along with the citizens’ group, River March, will be creating three artificial ponds at the newly made parking lot to prevent immersion of idols in the Dahisar river.

“Last year, around 650 idols were immersed in one pond by citizens who came for artificial immersion. We are expecting a bigger turnout this time. We have kept it in the parking lot space only so that the natural space of the SGNP is not disturbed,” said Vikram Chogle, member of River March.