Turning discarded temple flowers into incense and vegan leather, whilst providing hundreds of jobs for local women
My grand mom was quite a religious woman.
On days like Diwali or Krishna Janmastami, her house came alive in colors.
With orange and yellow marigolds at every door and jasmine in threads in everyones’ hair.
But then, flowers adorned on gods couldn’t be disposed away in trash. So she sent my brother and I away the following day, to drop the withered flowers at the temple or at the well nearby.
Now think about that at scale on the shores of what is considered one of the most revered rivers in the world – The Ganges.
Phool.co is an Indian biomaterials startup co-founded by Ankit Agarwal and Prateek Kumar in 2017 to recycle temple flower waste dumped in rivers in Kanpur, a city in the north of India.
“The idea of further using wasted flowers seemed ludicrous. We had to toil to convey our idea of recycling the temple waste because nobody was willing to take it seriously or give up their floral waste.
A year and a half and countless hours in a makeshift laboratory later, flowercycled incense was conceived and crafted. The mission to preserve the river Ganges and empower vernacular people by providing a means to earn their livelihood became a reality”
Since its inception, the social enterprise has flower-cycled 2,753 metric tons of temple flowers and has offset 275.3 kg of pesticide residues,” claims Agarwal.
As I learn more about tech startups, I realized that the circular economy, with growing interests world wide is another I am looking to learn more of!
Know of a tech startup driving social impact, drop me a note or tag them here 🙂
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My hope is, at some point in the future, to start a VC fund directed at #StartupsforSocialImpact – #TheGoodFund
Towards that, as I learn more, here is my weekly series to amplify tech and circular eco startups that are already paving inroads in this space.
#reviewswithranjani
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Additional Sources:
https://phool.co/pages/our-story
Phool: where women turn temple flowers into incense, bio-thermocol & vegan leather