This Ganpati festival, 16 organisations to recycle sludge from idol immersions

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The upcoming Ganpati festival in Pune will bring together a group of 16 organisations in an eco-friendly effort to recycle the sludge left after immersion of idols made of Shadu clay.
With more and more conscious citizens turning to environment-friendly idols made from Shadu clay, this collective of 16 organisations has come up
with a scientific mechanism to recycle the sludge from the immersion of idols.
Elaborating on the need for recycling the sludge, Suchismita Pai, director of Social Seva, one of the organisations involved in this effort, said Shadu clay is excavated from quarries to make Ganpati idols. Once the idols are immersed, the sludge that gets left behind is normally either poured into a river or deposited in the gardens. “However, given the nature of this clay, this is not the right way to recycle it. The clay, when poured into the river, forms a layer at the river bed and it is also not the right kind of clay to be used in gardens,” she said. Instead, the best possible way to recycle the clay is to send it back to the idol makers who can reuse it, she added.
Among the 16 organisations involved in this recycling initiative are Ecoexist, Jeevitnadi, SWACH and Centre for Environment Education. Pai said the easiest way to collect the sludge left by Shadu clay is to keep a cloth at the bottom of a bucket which is used to immerse the idol.
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