City to get its first flower waste recycling centre
Floral waste is a major concern in Chennai and is often dumped in landfills along with other waste. Environment consultant Ann Anra is all set to launch a flower waste recycling centre in Chennai. She is doing this in collaboration with NGO Kalaiselvi Karunalaya and Hyderabad-based initiative Holy Waste. For the past two years, Holy Waste has been converting used flowers from temples into different value-added products like incense sticks, soaps, etc. Co-founder of Holy Waste, Maya Vivek tells us, “Ann got in touch with us about the project and we were happy to collaborate with her. Holy Waste comes under the social enterprise Oorvi. Luckily, our ethos was matching with what Ann has been doing with Wasted 360 Solutions. NGO Kalaiselvi Karunalaya located in Mogappair also came on board for the recycling centre. They wanted to engage elders into productive work and thought this would be a great start.”
The team has decided to launch the flower waste recycling centre as a pilot project. “Though the work is not tedious, you need a lot of people to carefully segregate flowers. Oorvi is currently training the people in Chennai and help in setting up the shop. For now, the centre is functioning from the Kalaiselvi Karunalaya premises in Mogappair. As the first step, we have got in touch with the flower vendors from the Koyambedu market. We explained the process of flower recycling and the vendors were supportive of the idea. We have started collecting flowers from the market. For now, the Chennai unit will supply to Holy Waste brand,” she adds.