Varanasi is a busy town round the clock. Summer or winter or monsoon, the ghats continuously receive the dead to be cremated. For each body around 150 to 400 kg wood is required and on any average day the town uses 80 tonnes wood to cremate the bodies.

During one of his several visits to the holy town, Coimbatore-based N. Nityanandam, who was pained to see the number of trees being cut down just to meet the daily requirements there, has come up with a novel alternative for wood.

Around seven months ago, after making rounds to various ghats and crematoriums, he got back home and held discussions with the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation Commissioner, Dr. K. Vijay Karthikeyan, and several NGOs.

After several rounds of discussions, they decided to launch a massive drive to collect coconut shells from hotels, hospitals, schools, colleges and even retirement homes.

“The idea was to collect coconut shells from the public that will be converted into ash. This will be a perfect alternative to wood. Today we are set to dispatch 2400 tonnes of coconut shell ash to Varanasi by train,” Nityanandam said during the launch of the Kasi Pasumai Yatra at the Venkatalakshmi Matriculation Higher Secondary School.

In his address, Dr. Vijay Karthikeyan urged the children to cultivate a social aim, apart from nurturing a career dream. “It can be anything like donating blood, planting trees, lending a helping hand to the needy and many other things. If children become more responsible, the nation will progress,” he added.

The director of Roots Industries, Dr. Kavidasan, urged the children to do something useful for the society instead of expecting the society doing good to them. “We all should join hands to make our earth a heaven. Do good things for the society,” he said.

Others who attended the function were optimistic that the initiative would help save lakhs of trees in the country.