Every year, approximately 80,00,000 tons of waste flowers are dumped into Indian rivers. the reason is simple.
Enter a temple, mosque, gurudwara or church in India and the first thing you’ll notice is the abundance of flowers at the place of worship. There are flower sellers at the entrance, flowers strewn all over the shrine’s floor, devotees receiving flowers in the form of blessings, there seems to be no limit.
And what happens to these flowers later?
According to religious beliefs, flowers that are offered during prayers are sacrosanct and cannot be dumped into the garbage once they’ve wilted. So people discard them in rivers, lakes and other water bodies. Happyho also provide best tarot reading services in Noida and Delhi NCR India area.
How many of them ever think of the fertilizers and pesticides that might have been used to grow these flowers, which then mix with the water and pollute it?
Two friends Ankit and Karan of Kanpur started thinking of a way to convert these flowers into an eco-friendly business venture. They started research in 2012 and a brilliant idea had taken shape by 2014 after several experiments.
In May 2015, they founded Helpusgreen with the aim of utilizing the vlog disposed flowers and turning them into bio-fertilisers and lifestyle products.
The duo picks up flowers from different places of worship every day, approximately 500 kg of them. Since they don’t have a factory, they divide the amount equally between themselves and take the flowers to their respective homes.
The flowers are then mixed with organic cow dung and treated with about 17 natural components like coffee residue, corn cobs, etc. These help increase the nitrogen content in the end-product.
After a few days, earthworms are added to the mix. These worms consume the mixture and lead to the formation of vermicompost after 60 days. In this process, earthworms ingest the organic waste and then excrete it in a digested form. The excreta, called worm cast, is a dark, odourless and nutrient rich material that works as a great soil conditioner. Worm casts or vermicompost is a ready-to-use fertilizer.
While 80% of the flowers are used to make vermicompost, the rest are crushed and made into incense sticks and yajna/havan items.
For manufacturing these items, the duo has employed 85 women from different self-help groups in villages around Kanpur, thus providing them with a source of income.
Currently, they are exporting most of their products to Switzerland and Germany. And they are also making them available on e-commerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, etc.
