BANGALORE: Aiming at reaching out to as many individuals as possible, spreading the message of using eco-friendly Ganesha idols during Ganesha Chaturthi is Eco-Watch. Through their video, ‘Environment Friendly Ganesha’ prepared specifically for the purpose, they are planning to reach out to about 600 city-based schools before the festival.Speaking to City Express, Akshay Heblikar, environmentalist and director, Eco-Watch, an NGO working for the cause of environment conservation, said, “Through this network of 600 schools, we are expecting to reach about three lakh students, covering about 40-50 per cent of the city’s population.”“The copies of videos, made by Eco-Watch will be distributed for screening in schools. For those schools that do not have the facility for screening, we will ask them to seek help from the nearby schools. We have already sent the video to about 100 schools,” he added. When asked about the contents of the video, Heblikar said, “We have been campaigning for water conservation for more than a decade. With Ganesha festival on the anvil, the video is focussed on how painted Ganesha when immersed affects the water bodies.”“The aquatic lives are getting destroyed. The paints used in idols contain harmful toxic metals like lead, mercury and arsenic which increases the turbidity of the water bodies, and the water affects human health as well,” he said. Heblikar said, “To overcome the problem and prevent water bodies from getting contaminated, the best possible solution is to resort to eco-friendly Ganesha idols that are made of clay. Also idols made from newspapers and painted using vegetable dye and are readily available in the market. All these with elaborate pictorial representation form a major part of the video. Meanwhile, we are also trying to rope in a few other NGOs and NSS students so that we can extend our reach to colleges as well,” he added.
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