Ganpati Visarjan 2026: As Bappa bids Mumbai goodbye, a new product cycle begins

Thousands of Mumbaikars make their ways to the city’s beaches on Anant Chaturdashi, carrying towering Ganpati idols on trucks and their shoulders as the thunder of dhols, colours fill the streets and musical processions wind their way towards the sea. The familiar chant of “Ganpati Bappa Morya” follows the idols to the sea for immersion.

For devotees, it’s a farewell—an emotional culmination of days of prayer, celebration, and community gatherings. They will now wait for Bappa’s return next year.

But for Mumbai, that is not where the story ends.


Once the crowds leave the beaches, the next process begins: the idols must be retrieved, transported, and stored before eventually processed into something that can re-enter the economy.

Mumbai is now trying to build that second life. But considering the scale, it is far from an easy task.

The tonnes left behind

During the 2025 Ganpati Visarjan, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) collected around 200,000 Ganesh idols weighing approximately 2,500 million tonnes (MT). The corporation also collected 300 MT of Navratri idols. As per a BMC official, who spoke to ET Online on the condition of anonymity, all these idols are currently stored at the BMC’s Mulund Processing and Reclamation Site.

For this year, the civic body expects roughly the same quantum of material, although the actual volume will depend on how much is recovered after the Ganpati Visarjan. That leaves the financial capital with a peculiar waste-management challenge. Although the city has built a mechanism to retrieve thousands of tonnes of idols, processing the recovered material at scale is still a work in progress.

BMC has not entered into any partnerships or granted authorisation to private recycling companies for the bulk processing of the recovered idols in 2025. However, the corporation is now seeking agencies through an Expression of Interest (EoI) to process and reuse the recovered PoP (Plaster of Paris) material, the deadline for which is September 29.

BMC’s technical committee has already conducted laboratory trials of two processes, and the current EOI is based on the committee’s recommendation.

In other words, Mumbai’s challenge is not just collecting the idols after Visarjan; it is what happens after collection.

From a beach clean-up to a supply chain

On the ground, the work is far less simple than the word “recycling” suggests.

Beach Please Founder Malhar Kalambe, whose organisation has worked on recovering immersed idols, said the first problem is the sheer labour involved in breaking them down.

“On average, it took us approximately eight hours to break down 100 idols for a team of 20 people. So, it’s very labour intensive,” he told ET Online.

The collection and segregation of material are handled separately from its processing, said Binish Desai, Founder of Pushpam, which converts religious offerings and idol material into usable products. “The material can include the idol itself as well as other elements, provided they are recovered without excessive contamination,” he explained.

But the volume creates a new problem.

“There is so much inflow of material,” Desai said. “We want to recycle as much as we can so that there is less wastage of space, as ultimately, this material either ends up in a landfill or needs to be stored somewhere.”

The idols collected by civic bodies are stored before they can be processed. If processing cannot keep pace with inflow, storage becomes part of the waste-management equation.

The cost of collection, transportation, and storage of the 2,500 MT of Ganesh idol material in 2025 was around Rs 75 lakh, according to the BMC official. This year’s cost is estimated to be 20-25% higher, he said.

That figure, however, does not include the cost of recycling the material.

The clay route looks different

There is another model taking shape outside the municipal PoP system.

In Maharashtra, families are being encouraged to dissolve clay idols at home rather than send them into natural water bodies. The clay is separated from other materials and taken to collection centres, from where it can return to sculptors.

PUNARAVARTAN, a campaign started by eCoexist Foundation in Pune in 2020, recovered more than 76,000 kg of clay across Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Thane, Mahad, and Mumbai in 2025, according to a Times of India report.

This model turns the idol into a source of raw material rather than a one-time product. For artisans, there is also an economic incentive involved in this process. Recovered clay can reduce the cost of raw material and potentially help traditional sculptors compete with cheaper PoP idols.

But this model also exposes the limits of recycling.

While the network has expanded, storage and processing remain key constraints. Wet recovered clay requires space and time to dry before it can be reused, but Mumbai lacks space for long-term storage, according to the Times of India report.

That is where the environmental movement around Ganpati Visarjan begins to resemble a conventional supply chain, where collection is the first link.

The business of creating valuable items

For recyclers like Desai, the central question is not simply whether an idol can technically be recycled; it is whether the material can be processed economically and turned into something people will pay for.

Kalambe puts the problem bluntly: “Sustainability is expensive, and India is a very price-sensitive market.”

His organisation’s idol-recycling campaign is currently supported by a CSR partner, while products are made in batches rather than on a large industrial production line.

Desai makes a similar argument. “The first rule of sustainability is a balance of three things. It is people, planet, and then money.”

“Anything to be sustainable, it cannot be charity,” he said

Pushpam has experimented with converting recovered religious material into products ranging from decor items and planters to corporate gifting products. Its MurtiCycle process uses recovered PoP idol material to create a material that can be moulded into products.

“I believe that for individuals or private players, there’s a lot of scope to jump into this,” said Kalambe.

The organisation, under its ‘Visarjan Se Vidhya Tak’ initiative, makes study tables and benches from recovered material after visarjan. Desai said around 790 benches and study tables were made from recovered idols last year. This year, Desai is targeting 4,000 tables, with a further verbal commitment that could raise the potential total to 10,000.

The proposition is straightforward: recycling becomes more viable when recycled PoP has a market value.

But the material is not just PoP

Another part of the idol that often gets overlooked in the recycling process is the decorative material, Kalambe pointed out. “One thing that is a bigger problem than POP is the imitation work on the Ganpati, such as the diamond work,” he said. Desai also pointed out that recovered idols can contain fabric, plastic ornaments, metals, and synthetic fibres, making the separation process more complicated.

That matters because the economics of recycling depend on what reaches the processing facility. While a material may be technically recyclable, recovering it can become commercially unviable once it is mixed with other materials.

Building a market, not just a clean-up practice

The emerging post-Ganpati visarjan ecosystem raises three separate questions: who collects the idols, who processes them, and who buys what comes out at the other end?

At present, Mumbai has clearer answers only to the first question.

BMC has a collection, transportation, and storage mechanism. It has recovered thousands of tonnes of material and is preparing to select agencies for scientific processing and reuse.

But recyclers need viable processing technologies, adequate storage, predictable material flows, and customers for the end products.

Desai sees a large opportunity in idol recycling.

“There is so much opportunity...The only reason it has not yet been there is no one is able to add value to it,” he said

He believes that developing the right technologies and processes can make the market scalable.

Kalambe, meanwhile, argues that the ecosystem needs to be designed rather than left to individual organisations.

“When you talk about Ganpati idol recycling, there is no ecosystem as of now. So, we have to start from scratch,” he said.

He also calls for a standard body to oversee the process and suggested systems such as QR codes to track idols from manufacture through immersion and recovery.

The logic is similar to any circular economy. Material has to remain traceable, collection has to be predictable, processing has to be commercially viable, and someone has to bear the cost at every stage.

On Anant Chaturdashi, the city measures the festival in crowds, idols, and processions, which marking the end of the 10-day Ganesh festival with the immersion of the idols. The next set of numbers stands a bit quieter. How many tonnes will be recovered, how much could be processed, how much space will be freed up and how much material will find a buyer?

For the millions watching Bappa immerse into the water, visarjan is a goodbye.

For Mumbai’s economy, It’s the beginning of another product cycle.