#GodSaveTheOcean: This Ganesh Chaturthi, Mumbai NGO makes idols that fish can eat

Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival celebrated by thousands across India, especially in the state of Maharashtra. And while the celebrations bring joy to many, it unfortunately doesn’t gel too well for our water bodies.

Every year, Mumbai immerses over 1.5 lakh idols (typically made of plaster of paris and chemical paints) in the waters as part of the Ganesh Chaturthi festivities, causing water pollution and destroying the fish.

However, this Ganesh Chaturthi, due to the efforts of a Mumbai-based NGO, neither the fish, nor the water-bodies will have to suffer.

After 12 years of cleaning up the beaches post visarjan and urging people to reduce the size of their idols, Sprouts Environment Trust decided to take Eco-Ganesha to the next level and ended up creating idols that the fish can eat.

The idols are thus made of vegetarian fish food, corn, vegetable powder and are coloured with materials such as haldi, kumkum, chandan and other water soluble materials.

“These ingredients are not only harmless but are also useful for the fish,” says Anand Pendharkar, founder of the NGO Sprouts Environmental Trust.

Priced at Rs 900, the idols took close to six-seven days to make and are nine inches in size. “The idea was to make smaller idols, so that the impact created is lesser. And, unlike the traditional idols, which take years to dissolve, these only take four to five hours,” stated Pendarkar.

However, making them wasn’t as easy as it sounds as most idol makers refused to even entertain the idea of making idols with these materials or paint them with eco-friendly colours. “Finding and convincing idols makers was a tough task. Also, due to the short time we had to make the idols, dry them and then transport them from the artisans to the destination without any damage, we decided to limit our domain only to the Mumbai market,” he ruefully admits.

The popularity of these idols can be guaranteed by the fact that all of their idols have already been sold, apart from the fact that their ad going viral on social networking sites. Admitting that the overwhelming response was beyond their expectations, Pendharkar says, “We knew that our idea was unique and sensitive to the problem at hand, but frankly we never thought that it would be the face of a tsunami of awareness and go viral this quick. We’ve received uncountable calls and messages from all over the world congratulating us on our catchy hashtag (#GodSaveTheOcean) and we can only thank Oglivy and Mather for assisting us in coming up with the same.”

According to Pendharkar, the aim is to get more and more people think of the environment before buying traditional idols made of toxic materials and encourage artisans to make idols in different formats, keeping the environment as a priority.

Let's hope this Ganesh Chaturthi onward, God really does save the ocean.

Image credit: Sprouts Environmental Trust