RSD 15 - Data in relation
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
Transformation
Re-Routing Devotion
A practical approach to managing holy waste on the Varanasi ghats
KEYWORD
Bhargav Ram Chodabattula ¹, Manvi Bhayre ², Yash Maherwal ³, Vivek Kant ⁴
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
ABSTRACT
Every day the Varanasi ghats take thousands of offerings like flowers, cloth, diyas, and much of it now arrives wrapped in plastic. Putting something sacred in a municipal bin feels like a betrayal, so the river gets it instead. We wanted disposal to feel like part of the ritual, not a break from it, and the loaded climb up the steps to stop. The concept follows one offering through five stages: ritual act, collection, separation, transformation, return. A deposit station at the water, gravity down the steps into barges, and the material coming back as wrapping for the next offering.
#Holy waste #ancient ghats #human-centered solutions
#floating river barges #circular economy
CREATIVE PROCESS
We kept moving between the very small and the very large, what sits on one offering plate, and how 84 ghats move waste. Actor maps, a frequency-versus-impact matrix, a daily cycle, a yearly one. The surprise: flowers take the most room, but one in four components is synthetic. Contamination by item count, not weight, is what makes sorting slow and expensive.
IMPLICATIONS AND NEXT STEPS
Build with religious sentiment rather than against it, and the approach can travel to other pilgrimage sites. But we’re not claiming it works yet. The Kund needs a flood strategy, the chute needs gradients, the barge needs a cost per tonne. And nobody has asked a devotee whether they’d use it. That question belongs to the ghats, not to a desk.
References
Kamboj, V., Devi, P., Jaan, I., Singh, R. B. P., & Bisht, A. (2024). A case study on characterization and management of solid waste at selected spiritual sites in Dehradun, India. AgroEnvironmental Sustainability, 2(4), 205–215. https://doi.org/10.59983/s2024020406
Kumar, A., & Rana, N. K. (2024). Significance of source segregation of solid waste in management: An overview of Varanasi city, India. In H. M. Saleh & A. I. Hassan (Eds.), Waste management for a sustainable future. IntechOpen. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1006103
Mishra, S., Avinash, G., Kundu, M. G., Verma, J., Sheth, A., & Dutta, A. (2025). Work-related musculoskeletal disorders among various occupational workers in India: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Occupational Health, 67(1), uiae077. https://doi.org/10.1093/joccuh/uiae077