Turning floral waste into incense sticks to save the Ganges river in India

Indians offer flowers at temples as mark of purity and sacredness to the gods, and the sheer quantity of waste generated by those flowers from various temples is overwhelming. Every year Indians dump about 8 million tonnes (8.8 tons) of waste flowers loaded with pesticides and insecticides into various water bodies, destroying their fragile eco-system. Ankit Agarwal, a young entrepreneur in the northern Kanpur city, which lies on the banks of the Ganges, is helping minimise that damage by collecting tonnes of flower waste and repurposing it into incense sticks and recyclable paper that can be planted as seeds after use.