An Eco-friendly Diwali!

Ways to celebrate eco-friendly diwali

Diwali is festival of lights. On this festival relatives come together and celebrate together. Usually the rituals include lighting diyas, offering prayers to goddess Laxmi, making rangoli, exchanging home made sweets and bursting crackers.

But according to the changing times we need to make few changes in our celebration too. Bursting crackers on a large scale contributes to noise pollution and air quality degradation. This is harmful for environment as well as elderly people and children.

So here are 6 ways using which we can celebrate a eco friendly Diwali:

1) Say NO to bursting crackers
This can be unavoidable if there are children at home. For them diwali means bursting crackers. As we cannot completely avoid crackers, we can atleast try to reduce the number. We can burst them in community and in large groups so that children can have fun and our individual contribution is less decreasing the overall number of crackers being burnt.

2) Buy local diyas
Many of us are now buying electrical lamps which are made of plastics. We are celebrating our own festival and boosting foreign economy. Though the electrical lamps are maintainable and they never go out we can still buy local diyas from local vendors. This way we cam save a lot on electrical consumption and our traditional diya artistes will get their due too.

3) Avoid plastic shopping bags
Plastic creates a lot of waste and is extremely harmful for the environment as well. Instead of plastic bags we can use paper/ cloth bags and can carry our bag too while going for shopping.

4) Use of reusable plates for guests
Inviting family and friends over to our home to make them taste our delicacies is a common ritual where we unknowingly make use of plastic and create hazardous waste around us. Instead of using plastic plates and thermocol glasses to serve our guests we can use steel plates and regular glass. We can also use silverware utensils and save our surrounding from plastic waste.

5) Plants as a gift
Exchanging sweets and gifts among our loved ones is also a very common ritual. But consuming sweets excessively may lead to health problems in future. Instead we can start trend of gifting plants as a diwali gift to our friends and family. Plants will purify the air and also keep the mosquitos and insects away. They will also make our house look more beautiful.

6) Eco friendly rangoli colours
Making rangoli in front of our houses during diwali is done by most of us. Instead of using these chemical rangoli colours we can make use of flowers or eco friendly colours to draw beautiful designs in our homes. This way our environment will be less affected.

It is really about our choices that make the differences. Let us all come together to be responsible citizen and celebrate a clean, green, smoke-free, noiseless and organic Diwali this year.