Eco-friendly worship: Effective waste management in various worship sites of India

For most of, we praying are a state of mind that takes us closer to god with an aim for tranquilly and to reaffirm our aspirations with a higher power. Some of us might be going to a temple, some others to a church or to a mosque or to any other institution that seats the power you believe in. Appeasing the gods for favorable outcomes is something that we started many centuries ago. A prayer can be selfish or selfless, but still, it is the conduit by which the human mind tries to communicate with a higher power.

In the modern world, devotion still plays an important role, and you can find at least a temple or a church or a mosque on every street. How each of these sites chooses to worship a deity might be different. For example temples of Hindu traditions tend to use flowers or milk or even coconut as an offering to the gods. Similarly, different items exist for the others. Every day thousands of believers come and goes and the end result is a heap of offerings that might have no other use the very next day, as new worshippers come and the cycle repeats.

So what can a spiritual institution do, when they have this large amount of devotee offerings? The truth is that they can do many things, many productive things. But the fact is that the commodity produced as such also joins the list of waste that we ship off to some truck that might be going to a dumping yard. Some of them even doesn't reach any trucks and is left to rot in roadside pavements.

When you dissect and look into the waste generated by temples and other religious institutions leaving aside the plastic containers, wax and fabric materials, a major chunk of the waste is organic. We try to tell people that there is much more to organic waste for it to be just burnt off. Another kind of waste that's generated in temples are not directly related to worship; most institutions have food donations or sponsored feasts for the devotees and here also a large amount of organic waste is being generated.

It is interesting to note that, we are changing and changes are not abrupt and it happens slowly. It is very welcoming to find the efforts of many temple bodies and other communities to use some sort of in-house waste management technique to manage their wastes. For example, Sri Rathnagireeswarar temple in Chennai uses the aerobic decomposition of floral wastes and the Sree Sai temple there converts the floral waste to aromatic lotions. These are all small steps taken to the brighter direction of a better nature for all.

Many sites have even pooled their resources to form a hub with a processing plant that takes care of all of their waste. More technologies are coming into play, especially with new ventures trying to make an impact in the field of waste management. Many companies like Solwearth is dedicated to securing a sustainable future for our next generation.

Solwearth Eco-tech manufactures and market a new breed of organicwaste converters called SE food waste converter. Its a revolutionary device that takes up minimum floor space, processes your organic waste under 15 hours and converts it into nutrient supplements for the soil. There is a say saying about life itself, that we came from matter, we are matter, we go back to being matter. Quite similarly SE food waste converter helps the so-called waste to be back into the earth, only to enrich it.

Methods like composting are resource intensive and produce a foul smell. Solwearth's product takes all that problems away. Since the place of worships is always embedded into a society they can stand in as a hub to dispose of all kinds of organic waste. A temple in association with the local residents can invest in a device like this to effectively manage their waste. The same is true for churches, mosques etc.

Noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said that nature is the manifestation of God. Whether it is accurate or not, we need nature. It is also our inherent duty to protect it. And it is from that inherent duty the concept of Eco-friendly worship arises. Avoid plastic and other non-degradable materials in worship sites, talk to the management about it. Next time you go for a prayer look whether they have any waste management systems in place, communicate the necessity of it and if possible introduce them to new technologies like the organic waste converter manufactures in India from Solwearth.