A black Honda sedan pulls into the driveway of the building adjacent to Holy Waste. The driver, Hameed, speaks on the phone excitedly, “Madam send the entire team downstairs. The car is stuffed with flowers.” We all look down from the terrace of the three-storeyed building. Every inch of the car is stuffed with red, yellow, white, orange flowers — Gerbera.
They process floral waste from temples to manufacture fragrant soaps, incense sticks and natural compost.
Holy Waste is a social enterprise run by Maya Vivek and Minal Dalmia at Gundlapochampally village in Kompally. They process floral waste from temples to manufacture fragrant soaps, incense sticks and natural compost. Seated on the floor of the terrace, a team of women start plucking petals from semi-dried and wilted roses.
Maya and Minal became friends through their children. Their friendship led them to dream of doing something together but had absolutely no idea what. Says Minal, “Around that time we read the news of the Kanpur-based brand ‘Help us green’ who process flowers from temples. We began experimenting at home. We would forage the colony’s gardens and streets to pick flowers and worked at home to first understand the process. We started our experiment in October 2018. We had no prototype until then. We were successful in doing what we wanted to by the end of the month with help from a few people. We set our first bin at Skandagiri temple in Secunderabad, in November 2018.”
They process floral waste from temples to manufacture fragrant soaps, incense sticks and natural compost.
Currently the team of Holy Waste has 20 bins at 20 different temples in the city. They have one auto trolley that picks the bins four times a week. “We also answer urgent calls to pick flowers on an emergency basis,” informs Maya.
Holy Waste is less than a year old and has won the Best Green Startup award under Eco Ideas by Green India Awards 2019. Here Maya clarifies: “Apart from weddings, we collect flowers from functions by staying in touch with event managers. Also, of course, from flower shops — and the gerbera that came just now is from a flower farm. This not being the ideal season for auspicious occasions, these flowers which are otherwise used for decoration serves no purpose. If we didn’t take it, all of it would land at a dump yard and rot. That’s why the moment we got a call from the gerbera farm, we sent the car immediately,” she says excitedly.
Once the flowers are unloaded from the car, five trips are made by the work force to lug them up in bedsheets to the third floor of their processing unit. The petals, they inform will be dried and powdered to make incense sticks and the stalk and the bulb will go into the compost drums.
- The team of Holy Waste is receiving close to 100 kilograms of flowers every alternate day owing to the Bonalu festival. During Ganesh festival they are expecting this number to multiply many fold. The team is in talks with GHMC to set up a decentralised unit so that the processing work can be done there instead of carrying everything to their unit.
- During non-festival days the team process approximately two kilograms of flow
- This step ensures the flowers and garlands don’t end up in the already polluted Hussain Sagar lake.
After the petals are dried they are made into a fine powder with an industrial grinder that can work for an hour at length. Every week the team powders about two kilograms of dried petals. They are then sieved and stored in airtight bins. “The moment we started this social enterprise we approached the Sarpanch of the Gundlapochampally village for work force. He was not just helpful, but also suggested we use their community hall for our work. We began with two women from the village, now we have a steady force of seven. One of them Mouni, who is a college drop out, is planning to finish college through correspondence course with her salary,” says Minal.
Holy Waste is by Maya Vivek and Minal Dalmia
All the women who work with Holy Waste are now experts at rolling agarbattis . Ask them how it is done and Mouni explains, “We take the required amount of petal powder, knead it with a natural binder and water and make a smooth paste. The dough should be harder than the atta dough but not too tough. Once the dough is ready, we pinch out small amounts and begin rolling into the sticks using our hand. The rolling is done over a smooth wooden rolling board. They are then left to dry. This is followed by the process of using natural oils for the fragrance.”
The team sells the incense sticks and soaps at organic bazars and online. At other times they are almost always busy making personalised gifts for occasions.
