HelpUsGreen is a social enterprise based out of Kanpur, India founded in 2015 by Karan Rastogi that preserves the Ganges by flower-cycling the waste from the places of worship and converting them into patented lifestyle products with the help of rural women enabling circular economy. The company collects 2.4 tons of floral-waste from temples and mosques in Uttar Pradesh, India on a daily basis recycles these floral wastes into charcoal-free and bamboo-less incense, that helps in managing the floral refuse in the river and also helping in reviving The Ganges. HelpUsGreen are also in the process of developing methods of converting the waste flowers to bio-ethanol.

In Hinduism, any item depicting a god is considered sacred, including any pictures, leaflets, boxes, clothes with their images/teachings inscribed on it. Traditionally, it is considered that such items cannot be trashed, and should rather be disposed of in the same manner as one would dispose of the deities – by offering them to trees, or immersing them in rivers and letting them flow with it and permitting nature to take its course on them. This creates ecological and environmental issues, which can be witnessed with the number of pollutants that can be found in the depths of the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna et al.

Recently, there has been a trend for moving towards environmentally sustainable options to prevent such wastage – deities are made out of soil and mud that are soluble, such that upon their immersion in water, they help form the riverbeds. However, such options were limited for packaging other items containing the holy scriptures or images. We attempted to solve a small part of the issue, by using seed paper packaging to create the boxes for the incense sticks.

This packaging can be sown in land post usage and they do not leave any residual waste. Further, since the packaging uses seed paper, once sown, it develops into plants of Tulsi over time (which are also considered sacred in Hindu mythology). The ink used on the packaging is also made up of vegetable dyes, which are also completely ecological and biodegradable.

This packaging helps set out Help Us Green differently than other market products, while also providing an ecological and sustainable solution to environmental issues, parallely maintaining the religious beliefs of its users.