{"id":75829,"date":"2017-07-04T13:42:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T08:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org\/?p=75829"},"modified":"2017-07-04T13:42:47","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T08:12:47","slug":"these-indian-entrepreneurs-upcycle-used-religious-flowers-into-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=75829","title":{"rendered":"These Indian Entrepreneurs Upcycle Used Religious Flowers Into Products | Fast Company"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hindus offers flowers to deities during worship. Lots and lots of flowers. Every year, some\u00a0800 million tons of blossoms\u2013red roses, yellow marigolds, prickly xanthiums\u2013are deposited at the nation\u2019s\u00a0temples, mosques and sikh\u00a0gurudwaras, creating a colorful, but tricky waste problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Because the flowers have been used\u00a0for worship, they\u2019re sacred, and therefore can\u2019t be just sent to landfill,\u00a0explains Ankit Agarwal, an Indian entrepreneur. Hindu temples often put the spent\u00a0flowers into the River Ganges or nearest river.<\/p>\n

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When\u00a0Agarwal and his partner and childhood friend Karan Rastogi first proposed finding alternative uses for used flowers, they met a lot of resistance. The temples thought the young men wouldn\u2019t treat the flowers with the required reverence, or that there couldn\u2019t possibly be a business in flower recycling. Two years on, they\u2019ve proved the\u00a0naysayers wrong.\u00a0Agarwal and Rastogi have a thriving company called Helpusgreen, <\/a>which produces a range of products from the flowers, including incense sticks, enriched compost (735 tons so far) and bathing soaps.\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n
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\u201cWhen we began in May 2015, everyone thought we were mad,\u201d\u00a0Agarwal says, \u201cNo-one had seen anything come out of flower used before and they were like\u00a0\u2018Oh, you really think you\u2019re going to do something with that?’\u201d<\/p>\n

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The company now collects 1.5 tons of flowers every day. [Photo: courtesy Helpusgreen]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Based in Sarsol, a small village in Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, Agarwal and Rastogi now collect 1.5 tons of flowers every day.\u00a0They work with\u00a029 temples. And they\u2019re only just getting started. They plan to launch in Varanasi soon, one the holiest sites for Hindus, as well as in Haridwar, Allahad and Kolkata, all cities along the Ganges River.<\/div>\n
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Flower pickers are a key part of the operation. Helpusgreen pays these pickers to sort the flowers in their different types while taking out unwanted cup holders and garland strings.\u00a0Agarwal says the pickers\u2013mostly women of lower castes\u2013normally earn about 10 rupees a day (about 15 cents) but now get at least 150 rupees (more than $2).<\/p>\n

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\u201cEveryone says eventually they\u2019ll make money, but we\u2019re doing it. And we\u2019re touching lives of people at the bottom of the pyramid.\u201d [Photo: courtesy Helpusgreen]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cRarely you get social enterprises that have revenues and that are in profit,\u201d Agarwal says. \u201cEveryone says eventually they\u2019ll make money, but we\u2019re doing it. And we\u2019re touching lives of people at the bottom of the pyramid. We find\u00a0that their confidence level improves. Before this, their confidence level was zero.\u201d Agarwal says Helpusgreen had revenues of $43,210\u00a0last year and that profits reached\u00a027%.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Helpusgreen convinced the temples and mosques to let them\u00a0have the flowers by claiming that the flowers would, in a sense,\u00a0be used for sacred\u00a0purposes. Incense sticks, which are normally made of coal, are part of Hindu ritual, while the soaps are used for purification. The sticks are sold in\u00a0paper infused with tulsi (holy basil) seeds, getting around another disposal problem (see the video here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cIn India, images of gods are used on incense products to boost sales,\u201d Agarwal says. \u201cPeople find it very tough to throw the packets in the dustbin because of the image. They tend to hoard them or leave them in the river or at a temple. With our packaging, once they\u2019ve used the product, they can sow the paper in the ground [and grow the plant].\u201d<\/p>\n

Agarwal was recently in New York, taking part in this year\u2019s Echoing Green fellowship<\/a>. The award comes with a two-year stipend worth about $90,000\u2013money that Agarwal plans to use for further expansion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hindus offers flowers to deities during worship. Lots and lots of flowers. Every year, some\u00a0800 million tons of blossoms\u2013red roses, yellow marigolds, prickly xanthiums\u2013are deposited at the nation\u2019s\u00a0temples, mosques and sikh\u00a0gurudwaras, creating a colorful, but tricky waste problem. Because the flowers have been used\u00a0for worship, they\u2019re sacred, and therefore can\u2019t be just sent to landfill,\u00a0explains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}