A campaign initiated in Pune city collected 15,000 kilograms of clay sludge after the traditional immersion of Ganesh
idols during the recent festival. This clay sludge will be used by idol makers for making new idols. Natural clay is a
non-renewable material usually mined in states like Gujarat and West Bengal and brought to Maharashtra and
other parts of India to make idols. Clay mining impacts both the environment and the health of the miners.
Authorities in Pune are also reusing festival flowers and other religious wastes to make festivals more
sustainable. Mongabay-India correspondent Manish Kumar reports
Dinesh Gole is an artisan working from Pen, a small town, around 110 kilometres away from Pune in Maharashtra, where he makes idols of the Hindu god Ganesha. These idols are Pen’s main claim to fame and they travel to several parts of India and even to other countries, especially during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival every September.
Gole makes around 1,500 Ganesha idols of different sizes every year which go to the bigger cities of Pune, Mumbai and Nashik in Maharashtra. He uses natural clay, locally known as shaadu maati, as the base to make these idols.
This core raw material of the idols made in Maharashtra, however, is often mined in other states and transported here during major festivals.
“We receive the natural clay mainly from Gujarat, where it is mined. We buy it at a rate of around Rs. 150 for 35 kilograms of clay which comes in a packet,” says Gole.
Natural clay is a non-renewable, silicate mineral which is usually extracted from the ground by mining. West Bengal and Gujarat are the main states where clay is mined and then transported to Maharashtra and other parts of the country. The whole process – mining, extraction and transportation – is known to cause pollution and health hazards for those working in the mines, besides degrading the natural resources in the areas where the clay is mined.
Pune city, one of the main cities where these clay idols eventually land up, initiated the Punaravartan campaign this year, to minimise the impact of clay mining while celebrating the Ganesh festival. Voluntary organisations along with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) came together to establish a system of collection of clay sludge after the immersion of the idol. This material will be recycled into idols for the next year.
The Punaravartan campaign aligns with the guidelines of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on using eco-friendly idols to prevent contamination of water bodies. The campaign collected 15,000 kilograms of clay – about the weight of two and a half adult elephants – from citizens, schools, societies and corporates in September 2022, when the Ganesh festival took place. This quantity of clay can be used to make about 15,000 new clay idols of one kilogram each, next year.
“Natural clay is a perfect material to make idols. The clay particles are fine and have good adhesive quality. When immersed in water (a Ganesh festival tradition) the idols get dissolved within 10 minutes. This is unlike the Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols which take several months to degrade,” Gole told Mongabay-India.
PoP, another material which was commonly used for making the Ganesh idols, was cheaper and lighter than natural clay. It was slowly replacing natural clay as a material for the idols. But because of its environmental impact, especially on water bodies in which it was immersed, in 2020, the Central Pollution Control Board banned the use of PoP for making idols. PoP idols had chemicals like gypsum, sulphur, phosphorus, and magnesium and the dyes used in colouring had mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, and carbon – many of these have a harmful impact on the water bodies in which the idols are immersed and their associated ecosystem.
Manisha Sheth, the founder of eCoexist, an environment organisation based in Pune, explained that efforts to recycle clay started in 2020, but it expanded and became bigger this year with the involvement of more people and organisations.
“We started this in 2020 on a small scale. We first experimented with some damaged idols to see the feasibility of recycling the clay and it worked very well. The artisans were also comfortable with the concept. We then planned to expand this and approached other environmental organisations and like-minded people. As clay is a non-renewable source, we wanted to minimise its usage. So we decided to recycle it,” Sheth said.
(Mongabay-India/TWF)