Chennai, 5 October 2017: Reflecting on the true spirit of the festival season this year, Mangaldeep, the leading agarbatti brand of ITC, has spearheaded a unique social initiative to turn Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple green. The ‘Mangaldeep Green Temple’ initiative, powered by ITC’s social investment programme – the ‘Mission Sunehra Kal’ aims to recycle organic waste - flowers, leaves, coconut shells, residues of incense sticks, fruits, prasadam etc, generated from the temple and turn it into a ‘Zero Waste Premise’ in partnership with temple authorities and community members.
The ‘Mangaldeep Green Temple’ initiative also involves deployment of innovative technologies to foster a self-sustainable, scalable and replicable model of waste management in temples.
The programme was kicked off by Sri. T.S. Krishnamurthy, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India and Sri. A.N. Srinivasa Rao, Hereditary Trustee, Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple. The event was also graced by Sri. C. Lakshmanan, Joint Commissioner, H.R&C.E., Chennai, Sri. C.S. Ram, Vice President, Dharmaparipalana Sabha, Smt. Nirmala Santhanam, TSR Family and Trustees, Members and Devotees of the Temple.
Mr. V.M. Rajasekharan, Chief Executive, ITC Matches and Agarbatti Division, said, “This pioneering project was coined as “Mangaldeep Green temple” initiative with the Mission to turn India’s iconic and venerable Temples green by making them benchmarks in environment sustainability and solid waste recycling.
In Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple, the process stared with study by a group of technical experts, which revealed that more than 90% of the solid waste generated by the temple comprised of organic matter.
The temple authorities and local communities were sensitized on the dire need of a waste management ecosystem and finally, with the consensus from all stake holders, the project was initiated at the temple premises.”
At Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple, two organic composters (Aagas) have been installed inside the temple premises to recycle 40-50 KG of Flower and garden waste getting generated every day. These composters can produce about 200 Kg of organic manure within a time span of 25 days which can be used in the Temple garden and can also be sold to the devotees by temple authorities.
Most of the popular temples in India attract a high footfall of devotees and generate a huge amount of organic waste. This waste goes untreated and is dumped along with municipal solid waste or disposed of in water bodies, damaging the environment. With Mangaldeep Green Temple initiative, ITC aims to reuse these organic leftovers and process them to generate compost and biogas, by setting up the necessary infrastructure at temples. The organic waste is converted to renewable source of energy which can be used by the temple. The compost can be used in their garden as organic manure and the biogas can be utilised in the temple kitchen.
Earlier this year, Mangaldeep Green Temple initiative was initiated in Kapaleeshwara Temple, Mylapore - Chennai.
At Kapaleeshwara Temple, two biogas plants of 12 Cubic meters capacity had been installed to use the cow dung of Goshala for generating Biogas and using it for cooking food (Annadanam) in temple Kitchen. The byproduct (cow dung slurry) from Biogas plant is converted into compost which is being used as a manure in the temple garden. An organic composter of 5 tons capacity is also installed to generate manure from leftover flowers, coconut shells, incense sticks & garlands etc.
[usercontrol: ~/user controls/gallery.ascx ImageUrl=/img/others/Organic-05-10-17]