Every evening when I return home, I see the mountain of flowers in polyethylene bags under the peepal tree. As it generally happens, auspicious pooja flowers turn in not-so auspicious waste.

These flowers either become soil pollutants or are flown away into water bodies. Do you know that around 800,00,00,000 kg flowers are thrown in Ganga every year? What if these flowers were turned into something that would not only generate revenue but also save the environment?

Nikhil and Preetham Gampa, the founders of Green Wave, put together all the flowers offered at temples and mosques and create incense sticks out of them. This initiative also provides employment to slum women. Their work perfectly fits the saying ‘Ek Teer Do Nishane.’

Nikhil recalls how he began with a research project to process mushroom into paper but couldn’t complete it. This extraordinarily innovative man is pursuing Masters in social entrepreneurship from TISS, Mumbai, and has also visited the remotest parts of Madhya Pradesh as a part of his course. Excerpts from a chat:

Share a few stories from your travel village diaries.

Women of these villages were hardly seen outdoors. They mainly got out of the houses to fetch water and for nature’s call. It was a hell of a task to communicate with them!

Boys here offer the dowry to the girls’ family. Can you believe it? This is mainly because of the low sex ratio. One more thing that may astonish you is, two or three brothers marry the same girl. Surprisingly, the society has accepted it. To know more about these customs, we enquired villagers. Alas! The people didn’t entertain questions related to their personal life.

Whenever people are building a house or a pond, a well or a dam, etc., they simply float an informal message. All the people willing to help, collect together and successfully complete the project. These tribal communities are not connected with the world, but their connection with one another is commendable.

What did you do to manage waste in these villages?

All we could do was to create and submit a report. But there is a huge potential in these villages as a lot of organic waste is generated. And, I have recommended solutions to the locals.

You have also worked on processing mushrooms into paper. Why didn’t you take it further?

Yeah! I worked on that research project. Paper industry is one of the largest industries in the country. It needs a huge investment. Our project would have required new set of machinery which was hard to procure. Furthermore, it was too complex to be practiced domestically. So, we dropped the plan now, but it is a great idea to pursue in future.

Coming to Green Wave, how did you start with it?

From products to government policies, everything in our country has a top-to-bottom approach. We decided to do the reverse, our approach is bottom-to-top. The main aim is to reduce the gap between producers and the consumers. We also wished to do something on a small scale, so that we could reach out to the underprivileged women of the society.

How has ‘Green Wave’ changed the lives of women?

These women help us process flowers into incense sticks which fetch them Rs. 6000 a month. They often share their problems with us. We then connect them with the organization who can help them solve the issues.

Rag pickers are the most important agents of waste disposal, but their conditions are the worst. How do you plan to empower them?

Firstly, we aim to run education campaigns for them and provide them with proper uniform and safety measures. These are very small things but are the most important ones. We have planned on bringing their voice during exhibitions and fairs. Through voicing their opinions and problems, they can get recognition from the society that will help them become confident. For Green Wave, these people will be the important players.

How do you plan to expand this initiative?

We are recruiting the new team to work with temples around the country. I hope that things go well.

Are you a temple goer?

Not a frequent one.

BTW, the temple priests were earlier reluctant to use the incense sticks made of already offered flowers. Nikhil explained to them that the sticks were nothing but a reincarnation of the flowers. The idea cleared all the doubts of the temple authorities. Isn’t it a beautiful approach?

Okay. I have a game for you. I will name some daily waste items we generate, and you will have to quickly tell me how it is going to reincarnate in its future eco-friendly lives. Here we go!

Disposed electronics:

Parts of a laptop.

Sale tags:

Decorative items, greeting cards.

Disposed plastic:

Can I tell you something? The plastic used for chocolate wraps and small wrapping is called micro plastic. These if wrapped in a foil and thrown in soil turns into amino (protein) and becomes biodegradable. I am currently working on it.

That’s amazing. Go on, worn-out clothes:

Bags, caps.

Tires:

(laughs) I have another story. I went to one village, and they had built a very small dam out of used tires. Apart from that, we can make attractive seating arrangements from tires.

Did you ever dry roses in your diary?

NO! My silly sisters and cousins do that. (Laughs). For science projects, I have dried many leaves and flowers in the herbarium files.

This article was first published on July 14, 2017.