This Ganesha Festival, Get an Eco-Friendly Idol That Grows Into a Plant

By Manabi Katoch

August 1, 2017

After a research spanning almost six to seven months, the team came up with the perfect Ganesha Puja kit.

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“What better can we ask of God when we have nature as a gift,” is the tagline of team Sasya Ganapathi.

Four childhood friends, Sudhakar, Bharat, Puneet and Vivek, were highly motivated to grow plants when they heard about global warming — they all started planting saplings at their home.

However, this passion took yet another turn when they all attended the celebration of World Environment Day at their respective colleges on June 5, 2015. At the time, Sudhakar was in the final year of B.com, Bharat and Puneet were doing BCA and Vivek was in the final semester of his engineering course. All their colleges celebrated the day by planting a sapling. But these four friends noticed that it was only on that day that people cared about global warming. The rest of the year, no one would bother to reduce pollution or plant a sapling.

The friends then decided to do something that would motivate people to plant a tree. While they were brainstorming to get the right idea, it was time for the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. They observed that almost every other house was welcoming Ganesha idols. However, they noticed that these idols were mostly made of plaster of Paris, causing more harm to the environment than good.

“We thought of spreading the idea of planting a tree on Ganeshotsav and also using clay idols instead of plaster of Paris one. But then we thought, how about clubbing these two,” says 23-year-old Sudhakar.

The friends then started researching on how they could sow a seed in the same pot where the Visarjan was also be done. They tried four different procedures — in two, the plants wouldn’t grow and in the remaining ones, the group was not satisfied with the Visarjan procedure.

Finally, after a research spanning almost six to seven months, the team came up with the perfect Ganesha Puja kit and named it Sasya Ganapathi.

Team Sasya Ganapathi – Sudhakar (left) and Bharat (right)

“Sasya means plant in Kannada. So here it was, our Ganapathi idol that would turn into a plant after visarjan and stay with you forever,” says Sudhakar.