Student wants to recycle India’s floral waste

Piles of marigolds, roses, carnations and other flowers left at India’s temples and mosques after religious ceremonies can be difficult to dispose of and often end up in rivers such as the Ganges.

But eco-entrepreneur Parimala Shivaprasad thinks she has the solution in a by-product of this floral waste.

Social enterprise

The 26-year-old from Bangalore, who is a postgraduate student at the University of Bath in England, wants to establish a social enterprise to extract essential oils from the flowers. The remains, she says, can be used as organic compost for growing vegetables to feed the poor.

Floral waste from temples

While studying for a degree in chemical engineering, Shivaprasad became interested in the idea of developing a business based on recycling floral waste from temples.

She says the compost could be used by small households or even by the temples on vegetable patches, because temples tend to feed people on a daily basis.