Mumbai: Sion-based NGO crafts eco-brick Ganpati idol

The Ganpati idol made of ecobricks

A Sion-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) called SWAN, which stands for Students, Women, Animals and Nature, is catching eyeballs with its ecobrick Ganpati idol, installed at a Dharavi mandal for Ganeshotsav.

The bricks

An ecobrick is a plastic bottle packed with used plastic inside to a certain density, so that it becomes hard, like a brick. These can then be used like building bricks and for making furniture, like park benches, desks and tables and other useful material, even in big city infrastructure.

Pradeep Francis, founder SWAN said, "The message through the use of ecobricks is do not litter. Find some use for this plastic and re-use it so that less of it goes into our seas or landfills. We do know that the stress is on less plastic of late but it is difficult to eliminate it completely. The next best thing is to find ways to re-use it in our life. The Divine is a powerful medium for the message." The idol is at the AKDVS Seva Mandal's pandal behind Kamraj School near Hanuman Mandir at Dharavi.

Also Read: How diverse cultures in Marol joined hands for a plastic-free Ganesh Chaturthi

The medium

Francis said that SWAN started conceptualising and then creating the Ganpati idol, roughly a fortnight before the Ganpati festival. "For our ecobrick Ganpati idol initiative we have used 200 plastic bottles. They have 50 kg of single use plastic filled inside to make ecobricks. We wanted to put the idol in a mandal so that there is more public awareness about how to save the environment. Besides devotion, a new concept always piques the curiosity of people. That means half your battle is won, as the curious ask questions which need answers and answers mean giving information and spreading awareness."

Visarjan plans

Francis claimed that the two-year-old NGO will, "most probably, hold a small procession with our idol on Visarjan day which is Sunday. The procession route means more people will see the idol. This will happen in Matunga, Sion and Dharavi. Then, we will pour sea water thrice, from Shivaji Park beach, over the idol as a symbolic Visarjan, take the idol back to our Sion office and keep it, or, we are mulling dismantling it and using the ecobricks, we haven't decided definitively what we'll do, but this is our tentative plan."

Change range

Two Std XII students, Ulagammal Vidhya Sundar Rajan and Nikita Venkatesan, who volunteer at SWAN Foundation, have made the 4.5 feet idol. The students said, "use as little plastic as you can. Talks about climate change, ecological balance may sound daunting at first, as if these concepts can only be practised by experts. Yet, we can make changes in small ways, in our everyday life. We wanted to send out this message that we can weave in change into every aspect of living. The COVID-19 outbreak has transformed the way we live, so why not bring in this new normal as we like to term it, into celebrations too? The festival, which is certainly curtailed in many ways this time, seemed to be the right platform to send this message. With so many mandals also giving online darshan, we have put our revered ecobricks idol on social media too, for maximum outreach."

Consistency key

The SWAN Foundation volunteers were enthused by the uptick in awareness that usually peaks post visarjan with a number of people and groups, including those allied to various organizations, doing beach clean ups the day after visarjan. A SWAN Foundation member said, "We see citizen involvement and that is uplifting. However, consistency is key in bringing a turnaround. So, we want to see that there are extremely well thought out, green ways to mark all festivals right from inception to the end." Signing off, the gladiators for green stated that warning bells are pealing across the world. SWAN reminded us, "There have been record floods in Europe, global warming is fuelling forest fires and climate change is bringing storms that escalate into hurricanes. It is time to heed this. None of us can sit back and say, we cannot do anything, let the others fight this battle. Every single one of us is a stakeholder in the race against climate change."

50kg
Quantity of single use plastic filled in the bottles