BMC Partners With NGO to Turn Lalbaug Ganpati Footwear Waste Into Shoes for Tribal Youth
Thousands of shoes, sandals, and slippers discarded during the Ganpati idol arrival processions in Mumbai's Lalbaug, Parel, and Chinchpokli areas will be recycled into new footwear for tribal communities and underprivileged students across Maharashtra.
The grand arrival ceremonies of Chinchpokli’s Chintamani and Parelcha Raja drew massive crowds on Saturday, leaving the surrounding roads heavily littered with footwear lost or abandoned by devotees. In response, sanitation workers from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) F South Ward carried out night-time sweeping operations on August 29, collecting approximately one dumper-load of discarded footwear.
In previous years, footwear collected after major festivals and crowded gatherings was treated as solid waste and transported directly to city dumping grounds. This year, the F South Ward’s solid waste management department launched an initiative to divert the material for productive reuse, handing over the collected items to the Green Sole Foundation. The footwear is currently being stored at an open ground near Saibaba Path School in Lalbaug.
The Green Sole Foundation, a charitable organisation, will process the collected footwear at its manufacturing facility in Bhiwandi. The usable soles and raw materials will be extracted and recycled to produce durable new footwear. With support from corporate CSR funds, the newly manufactured shoes will be distributed free of cost to needy students in rural Zilla Parishad schools and tribal children in remote areas, including Gadchiroli.
Vrushali Ingule, Assistant Municipal Commissioner of F South Ward, confirmed that the project was initiated this year to recycle footwear collected during the Ganesh festival and provide shoes to tribal students. Civic officials highlighted that the initiative reduces the civic body's expenditure on transporting solid waste to landfills while lowering the volume of plastic waste reaching dumping grounds.
Raju Srinivas, Senior Manager at Green Sole Foundation, said the organisation has been operating for a decade and manufactures at least one lakh pairs of recycled footwear each year. The BMC stated that the collaboration aims to give festival waste a second life while supporting underprivileged communities across the state.
