Presented by
Himanshi Singh
Nominated by
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
In India, every year 0.4 billion devotees go to temples/mosques to worship and showering flowers to Gods is a religious ritual. It is believed that these sacrosanct flowers should be discarded in holy rivers to maintain their sanctity. Sadly, these flowers rot and create havoc in ecosphere of water bodies. Toxic Arsenic, Lead and Cadmium from farm-runoff, insecticides and pesticides used to grow flowers mixes with river water making it highly toxic. Apart from this, crop stubble burning is an upcoming tornado in India. More than 100 million tons of straw is generated annually from wheat and paddy farms. After the crop is harvested, 80% of the stubble remains are burnt in fields to make the farm ready for next crop cycle. This has led to legal penalties against farmers and severe air pollution.