Nikhil Gampa — a 25-year-old student from TISS turns waste temple flowers into fragrant incense sticks
Discarding flowers offered at a temple isn’t easy in a country that reveres them long after they have decayed. But Nikhil Gampa from Chembur has found a novel way to get rid of the waste without raising a stink — in fact, he makes it an aromatic affair. The 25 year old uses temple flowers to make incense sticks. In the process, not only does he find a better way to get rid of the organic waste, he also offers employment to the local women.
It was a nasty bout of malaria in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh during a practicum trip that gave him the idea of investing in clean technology. “The incident triggered my interest in clean technologies and waste management practices,” reveals Nikhil who is pursuing Masters in social entrepreneurship from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. After returning to Mumbai, he decided to do a recce of various temples across the city for about three months and the revelations startled him. “Temple flowers are considered to be holy and are seldom disposed off along with the rest of the garbage. Instead, they are packed in plastic bags and thrown into water bodies or kept under a tree. There were times when I noticed people at Bandstand early in the morning throw flowers in the sea.
It was now obvious that poor flower disposal methods were not restricted to small towns and villages alone. I began to consult various scientists and researchers from my institute to find a suitable solution to make temples cleaner. During the research phase I realised that about 15 tonnes of flower waste is generated in Mumbai alone” he adds.
It was while pondering over the magnitude of the problem that Nikhil thought of incense sticks as something the flowers may be transformed into. Every Indian household traditionally uses incense sticks and hence there is constant demand for it. An added meagre capital investment nudged him towards the idea. Joining hands with Nikhil in this initiative are women from low-income groups of Mankhurd. “As a social science student we are linked with communities at a grass root level and we decided to make them a part of our endeavour. These women are domestic workers and get paid on the basis of the flowers they process,” he adds.
Though the blueprint of the idea was now ready, convincing temple authorities was a task at hand, “It was very difficult in the initial stages to convince the temple authorities because of the cultural and traditional notions attached with worship flowers. They were sceptical and wanted to know the background of the women who would be handling them, what would we do with the flowers etc. It took us some time to sensitise them and later they agreed,” he says.
Nikhil managed to bring two temples from Mankhurd on board. The process is simple, they have placed special dustbins in the temples where the flowers are collected, and the women empty these once every two days. The flowers are then segregated and set out to dry. The dried flowers are powdered and mixed with binding powder and sawdust and then rolled over with bamboo sticks to make the final product.
“Currently, we are producing approximately 15 kg of incense sticks per week. We got in touch with Iskon and Siddhivinayak as well. Iskon was willing to implement the idea at their own level and agreed to do it in their temple premises whereas Siddhivinayak Trust said they’d love to come on board but the capacity of waste flowers generated by them needs organisation. We are still functioning at an individual capacity.”
