Ganeshotsav is a festival of joy, happiness, and divinity. Ganeshotsav is particularly significant in and around Pune. Thum Creative Paryavaran Dakshata Kruti Manch, in collaboration with the Cummins India Foundation, is conducting several programmes to celebrate Ganeshotsav in an environmentally friendly manner. During Ganeshotsav, various activities are carried out, such as workshops on making Ganesha idols out of eco-friendly materials (soil, natural colours), decorating with eco-friendly materials such as leaves, flowers, and collection of nirmalya on the day of immersion and converting it into compost fertilizer. Along with this, several activities are conducted before Ganeshotsav to raise awareness among school children about environmentally friendly Ganeshotsav, such as painting, idol making and essay competitions.  

Approximately 3.5 lakh citizens were contacted in various ways and awareness about environmentally friendly Ganeshotsav was created among them. This was accomplished through the use of 15,000 colourful posters, 2 lakh printed leaflets, and social media posts. Stalls were set up in 40 housing societies before Ganeshotsav. We have sold 950 boxes of agarbatti made by us from nirmalya, and eco-friendly materials and paints for making Ganesh idols.

During Ganeshotsav, many people install Ganesh idols made from plaster of Paris. These idols, however, do not dissolve in water after immersion. Chemical dyes also pollute the water. to overcome this issue, on the day of immersion, the citizens were made aware that they should install Ganesh idol made from natural soil and natural colours, and if they had installed plaster of Paris idols, they should donate them. Nirmalya was collected from the citizens on the immersion ghats so that Nirmalya would not be immersed in the river.

13,000 large bags were provided to 3,500 waste pickers of ‘Swach’ organization to collect nirmalya from visarjan ghats. From this activity, 250 tons of Nirmalya was collected in three days of immersion. Later, it was converted into organic manure with the help of Pune Municipal Corporation.