Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Now, Tirumala to give laddoos in jute bags

Swati.Bharadwaj @timesgroup.com

Hyderabad:19.11.2019

One of the richest deities in the world, Tirupati Lord Venkateswara is now showing the way when it comes to eliminating plastic and adopting new eco-friendly packaging practices for distribution of its famed laddoo prasadam to devotees.

On an average, about 3.5-4 lakh laddoos are sold at the temple premises per day, which translates into a requirement of around 70,000 plastic covers on a daily basis, as per estimates.

Now, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the trust that manages the temple, has joined hands with Aditya Birla group company Hindalco and Jute Corporation of India to roll out a pilot project on distributing prasadam in 100% recyclable aluminium foil laminated jute bags. Hindalco and JCI have already applied for a patent for the process of aluminium foil lamination of jute.

As part of the pilot, JCI has opened an exclusive prasadam distribution counter for sale of jute foil laminated bags at TTD and over 1 lakh metres of the laminated fabric or around 3 lakh bags have already been sold over the past two months. TTD additional EO AV Dharma Reddy said efforts are underway to reduce the use of plastic in a phased manner and make Tirumala plasticfree.

TTD officials said they have been trying to encourage and facilitate use of non-plastic packaging materials at prasadam distribution counters like paper boxes, paper bags and foil laminated jute bags. However, a chunk of the prasadam continues to be distributed in polythene bags albeit of over 51 microns.

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