Plastic contribute to environmental waste in a big way. Ankit’s initiative is not just helping to stop the flower waste to go to landfill and waterways but also helping women with livelihoods in Kanpur, Tirupati and Andhra Pradesh. “Marriage is a process, not some sort of achievement that we need to spend a lot. Informing about the process, he says that once the plastic is crushed in the machine, it is further sent to the companies who use it to make new products out of it. Talking about the process, she explains that they have a dedicated team, which only works for weddings, and there are proper checks involved. From last one and a half year through his initiative HelpUsGreen,Ankit Agarwal with women workersAnkit has been collecting waste flowers from weddings across India and handcrafts them into charcoal-free incense sticks, organic vermicompost and biodegradable packaging material through flowercycling technology. “We do proper quality checks before collecting food and distributing the food. 29-year-old Ankit Agarwal from Kanpur has the solution for it.

We collect all the plates, water jugs, glasses and other plastic material after the wedding is over,” says 32-year-old Shahid. While the lavish wedding came under the scanner for its show of obnoxious opulence, there are no concrete statistics on how much of reusable waste weddings across the country generates. We have been collecting food for a long time.Colelcting food from weddings into containersGifting fragrancesApart from religious ceremonies and temples, weddings produce a lot of flower waste. If we distribute that on street then it’s more like begging, and we intend to give food as a motivation,” she informs. “They write inside the box that all the flowers used in this wedding will be repurposed. And the food is given as an incentive for beneficiaries to come to school or skill development centres. At the same time, thousands of Indians sleep hungry every night.

“This will get them out of the poverty cycle in the long-run. “I got married during the day so that we wouldn’t have to install lights and fans and waste electricity. “About one-fifth of the food served at weddings and social gatherings is discarded. It was then he decided to collect waste plastic utensils from most of the city’s five-star hotels hosting wedding ceremonies. All products are handmade by women workers and it is comfortable to work with people who are environment-friendly,” he says. We have temperature control vans and hygienic containers,” she reveals. The incenses are given as a gift to all the guests as a token of memory. “At times, PETG Film Sleevemaker-GH45 Factory we collect more than 1500 kg plastic and if it is lying on the fields, imagine how terrible the implications can be. While Amit may be among the few who are environmentally conscious, most Indian weddings still contribute significantly to food and other waste. “The plastic that we collect is not dirty, it is fresh and can be used again. So far, Ankit has catered more than 15 weddings and according to him, he connects only with clients who are eco-conscious. We only collected books because we both love reading,” he adds. These discarded petals go to waterways and harm marine life and the environment. Our invite was the size of a visiting card and guests were served only what they could eat,” says Amit who apparently got the idea of a zero-waste wedding from his college days at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

With her towering initiative, Srishti has collected food from thousands of weddings and assured that she contributes to society and couples to have a minimal waste wedding day. We gave them our ready incenses and they gave us almost 500 kg waste flowers,” reveals Ankit, who has also used waste flowers from Rajnikanth’s daughter Soundarya’s wedding in February 2019.Meals with LoveSrishti Jain, the co-founder of Feeding India has served over 20 million people in the last five years with the food collected from various hi-profile weddings across 75 cities in India.Recycling the flowers collected from weddingsUtensils for changeWedding waste is not restricted to food and flowers. We use pure essential oils to make it.When Amit Kalla, a poet and painter from Jodhpur, decided to get hitched, he made sure that his wedding ceremony contributed very minimally to environmental waste. And recycling somewhat feels like helping people to have nature-friendly wedding,” he adds.

“We generally collect seven tons of flowers from all the religious places, but we were contacted by a family from Kolkata in 2017 to collect their flowers and reuse them. Mumbai based Shahid Chaudhary, who owns a plastic recycling company JRS Recycling Solutions, was surprised to see tons of plastic near his locality after a neighbourhood wedding ceremony. The main beneficiaries of the food include children, women, elderly and specially-abled people. end-of Tags: waste wedding. We wanted to be very specific and wanted to ensure that every wedding season we target the maximum number of events,” says Srishti, whose NGO has also collected food from comedian Kapil Sharma’s wedding receptions in Mumbai, Ambala and Amritsar. And some are trying to put this waste to good use. Case in point: 4000 kilos of garbage that was left behind at a pristine hill station in Uttarakhand after a grand wedding ceremony of two sons of South Africa-based businessmen