UBA-MHRD

Recycle of Ritual Waste Materials to Incense Sticks- An Eco-Friendly Approach for Rural Industrialization and Entrepreneurship Development

Funded by Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, Ministry of Human Resource Development
Amount: Rs.50,000/-
Duration: 1 Year (October 2018 - September 2019)
Principal Investigator: Ms.N.Nirmala
Co-Investigator: Dr.Dawn .S S
Research Team from Centre for Waste Management: Mr.A.Santhosh, Mr.Arun Govind M
Students Team from Department of Chemical Engineering: Govarthini.S, Anna Dominic, Anjali Prasad, Sheetal Chandrasekaran, Karthika. M, Rasheeqa.M

Summary of the work done

In India, people show their religious devotion by offering flowers to the deity. Every year around 800 million tons of blossoms of red roses, prickly xanthiums, and yellow marigolds are used for worship at the temples, churches, mosques and gurudwaras, which creates waste deposition problems. The faith and emotions underlying these ritual wastes should make one prevent from throwing these wastes to the landfills. However, practically this does not happen; the ritual waste is either disposed on to the lands or thrown into water. This action leads to contamination of land and water thus becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes spreading foul odour and diseases. The spent ritual waste may contain pesticides or other chemicals sprayed on to them to retain freshness, that when disposed on to the land or water bodies leach into the environment. Most places of worship have no mechanism to effectively dispose this ritual floral waste. To avoid additional pollutant load on landfills and water bodies recovery of ritual flower rejects becomes very important.

This ritual waste is very common throughout India. Centre for Waste Management, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai has taken steps to collect ritual waste and has succeeded in making incense sticks adapting the 3R concept of Recovery, Recycle and Reuse. Collecting the ritual waste and processing it to obtain a value added material does not only provide options to make the environment clean but also serves as a potential for Rural Industrialization and entrepreneurship development, by initiating this objective in smaller demographic zones. Hence, to go in line with the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, of bringing technologies to community for societal benefit, Centre for Waste Management at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology is submitting this Technology Development proposal to benefit economically backward women of the Kumizhi village.