Impact of Ganesh Festival on environment
Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the most magnificent festivals celebrated with great passion across India. But while celebrating the Ganesh festival people generally ignore environmental impact of pollution on air, water and noise caused by various activities performed in puja and blatantly ignore their accountability towards nature to accomplish their own spiritual motives.
Rituals and customs are not the commands of God but man-made, and it is not possible to please the God by damaging his universe. In such circumstances, why not implement the several ways in which the rituals can be performed without causing any damage to the environment?
Water Pollution during Ganapati Visarjan
People generally forget the hazardous impact of the immersion of idols (as a religious ritual) on environment. Since most of these idols are made with cheap and easy to fabricate Plaster of Paris and chemical paints which contain good amounts of mercury and lead, after the immersion, the ingredients used for the making of idol does not completely dissolve in water and leads to water pollution. Along with Ganesh idols, people dump other accessories like thermocol, plastics, as well adding to the level of water pollution.
Most people conveniently forget that visarjan deleteriously effects the marine life thereby, disturbing the flow of ecosystem and has been proved to be profoundly negative as the damage it inflicts on us is irreparable! Yet every year, the government and other social bodies continue to digs out tonnes of garbage from the water bodies to clean the waters.
Switching into eco-friendly Ganesh idols to visarjan of the idol into tanks or bucket of water needs to be implemented. Even immersing ‘Betel Nut’ into water which symbolizes Ganapati into water and reusing same idol every year (made up of metal such as copper, brass can be done too.
Additionally, by avoiding dumping non-biodegradable material such as plastic, thermocol into water, and reusing it next year.
Air Pollution during Ganapati Festival
Fireworks and crackers are used in abundance during this festival, by the devotees which leads to air pollution, as harmful gases and toxic substances like Barium, Cadmium, Sodium, Mercury, Nitrate and Nitrite are released into atmosphere. Moreover, respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) level goes high in this season as small particles are released into the environment by these firecrackers.
Noise Pollution during Ganesh Festival
With all possible means devotees celebrates the prestigious festival with loud music by listening to bhajjans, kirtans and songs using massive speakers. And especially during the Anant Chaturdashi, which is the final day of the auspicious Ganesh festival, along with loud music we witness heavy traffic on the roads, which leads to increase in both air pollution and noise (excessive honking) pollution.
And to bring this awareness amongst the people, several measures usually takes place every year by the government to minimise the hazardous impact. Especially during the festival, a lot of campaigns and advertisements are showcased for people to understand the value of our environment.
