From 3,000 kg of Ganesha idol waste to 760 study tables: Inside ‘Visarjan Se Vidya Tak’ initiative turning PoP waste into classroom furniture for children in Maharashtra

Image Courtesy: Instagram/@kalambemalhar

What happens to a Ganesha idol after it is immersed during Ganpati visarjan? In Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, some of the idols are getting a second use as study tables, benches and other products for children. An initiative involving Mumbai environmentalist and Beach Please founder Malhar Kaalambe and Gujarat-based recycling expert Dr Binish Desai is collecting broken and immersed Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols and processing the material into usable products. The initiative is aimed at addressing two problems at the same time: the waste generated by PoP idols after visarjan and the shortage of basic educational infrastructure in some government schools.

From immersed idols to study tables

Around 3,000 kg of PoP waste was diverted during the pilot and converted into 760 study tables for economically weaker section students in NMMC schools.

According to Kaalambe and Desai, the circular-economy initiative is called ‘Visarjan Se Vidya Tak.’ The process involves recovering PoP from immersed idols, separating it from other materials and processing it into new products. The finished study tables are intended for government school students. The pilot project was carried out with the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), with support from Henkel India’s CSR division and the Rotary Club of Joy of Giving. As reported by Mid-day, around 3,000 kg of PoP waste was diverted during the pilot and converted into 760 study tables for economically weaker section students in NMMC schools. The team collected about 3,500 kg of PoP last year, of which around 3,100 kg was recycled. The material was used to make 700+ study tables, three benches, 500 keychains and more than 200 penholders, according to figures supplied by the team.

What happens to the idol material?

The recycling process does not involve simply crushing an idol and turning it directly into a table. According to Mid-Day, the PoP first has to be separated from paint, metal, cloth and other contaminants. Desai said metals are completely removed because the final products are intended for children. Paint is also removed before the material enters the recycling process. Desai told Mid-Day that for a typical 3-4 kg medium-sized idol, around 96% of the material can be recovered. The recovered material is then processed using the MurtiCycle technology developed by Pushpam.The proposed process involves recovering the PoP remnants after immersion, transporting them to a material recovery facility for drying and filtration, and then sending the refined material to a manufacturing facility in Valsad, Gujarat. There, it is made into water-resistant classroom study tables.

The project began with a small test

Malhar Kaalambe said the idea came from what he and his team had been seeing during their beach clean-up drives over the past nine years. After Ganesh Utsav, they would often find fragments and broken pieces of Ganesha idols on the beaches. “The whole question came up: where do the idols end up?” Kaalambe said in a conversation with News18. He said that even when idols are immersed in water bodies or artificial ponds, they are eventually collected, broken down and sent to landfills because there is currently no proper system for disposing of them.“That’s when I initiated a conversation with Dr Binish Desai. I was just trying to understand through him if we can recycle the waste that we find on the beaches, including these PoP idols,” Kaalambe said. Desai told him that he had already been working on recycling such waste for several years and had conducted a pilot project in Gujarat. The two then decided to explore whether the same approach could be replicated in Mumbai and Maharashtra. “In 2024, as a pilot project, we collected a few idols from the beach and sent them to Dr Binish’s facility, and these were recycled into multiple products,” Kaalambe said.The project then took a different direction when they connected the recycling effort with education. “In Hinduism, we call Ganpati the god of wisdom or education,” Kaalambe said. At the same time, the team found that many schools in rural and tribal areas of Maharashtra lacked basic educational infrastructure such as benches and study tables. According to the figure cited by Kaalambe, around 25,000 schools in rural and tribal areas lack such basic educational infrastructure. “That’s when we thought of integrating the two things and making it a project of not just circularity or environmental conservation, but also about disposing of the idols respectfully and supporting a child’s education,” he said.

5,000 study tables planned for 2026

The initiative is looking to expand this year. The team already has commitments for 5,000 study tables in 2026. The products are not limited to tables. The initiative has also produced benches, keychains and penholders from the recovered material. The initiative offers one route for dealing with the large quantity of PoP generated during Ganpati visarjan, but processing the material at scale remains difficult. For now, the work by Kaalambe and Desai is creating a direct link between recovered idol material and products that can be used by children. A Ganesha idol that once stood in a home or pandal can, after visarjan and several stages of processing, return in a very different form such as a table where a child can sit and study.