We Indians are well known for our love of colours; and never is this more evident than during the festival of Holi, when most of our country is awash with vibrant hues!
Holi celebrates the advent of spring and the blossoming of love, and it’s a time when family, friends and even strangers get together to play, laugh and douse each other with bright coloured gulal. Homes are filled with merrymakers; and with colours flying everywhere, normal life quickly grinds to a halt as the streets turn shades of yellow, pink, purple and red.
While the spirit of Holi is all-pervasive, the water balloons and the toxic chemicals used in pichkaris often take a toll on the environment.
So, this year, let’s celebrate Holi by going green. As the carnival atmosphere spills into your home, here are some sustainable décor ideas to keep the party flowing:
Make your own organic colours
Holi celebrations are nothing without colours, but the ones you buy from the market are undeniably toxic. Not only are the pigments harmful to our skin, but the powders and dyes contain harsh chemicals that mix with the surface runoff, ultimately entering our water resources and endangering plant and animal life. If these chemicals enter your eyes, you could have a severely adverse reaction that affects your sight. What’s more? The powders that you buy from the market are packaged using plastic, which ends polluting the earth or oceans in the form of microplastics.
So, make your own colours. Use Chandan, kumkum, turmeric and henna mixed in water instead of coloured liquids. You can also try extracting the juice from boiled beets to get a lovely purple dye.
Dry flowers with vibrant hues, powder the dried petals and mix them in some rice powder or cornflour to make colour powders. Pick flowers like the Gulmohar or roses, Tesu, marigolds and bougainvillea that have vibrant and deep hues, and use their leaves as well. The leaves and berries of the indigo plant can be crushed to make a deep blue dye.
Play with flowers, not coloured water
There’s a lot of water that gets wasted during Holi. Right from water balloons to buckets of coloured water, thousands of litres of water get mixed with toxic colours, rendering them unfit for humans, animals or even plants. The coloured water pollutes the groundwater and enters our streams and ultimately rivers, harming marine life as well.
Instead, be mindful and choose to save every drop of precious water. Join with friends and family and spread the message of a green, dry Holi where you can celebrate with flower petals or just dry organic powder. This festive season, make the conscious decision to be a responsible citizen.
Upgrade your furnishings with rainbow colours
Holi is the festival of colours, after all, and you can imbue your home décor with the colours of the season. Swap out your regular furnishings with cheerful, multi-coloured alternatives. Vibrant silk cushions in bright hues, a colourful throw on the couch, and jewel-toned bed linen can match up to the festive flavours.
Change your everyday drapes and put lengths of solid coloured bandhani sarees with mirrorwork or chiffon sarees at the windows, for a change.
Create DIY home décor
Say no to environmentally unfriendly decorations this year. Traditional store-bought decorations often use colourful balloons, which are made of rubber, latex and forms of plastic and are not biodegradable. Tinsel is made of metallic PVC which is a pollutant that ends up in landfills and lasts forever.
What you could opt to do is create your DIY home décor. Use old newspapers, magazines, or wastepaper to create your streamers or garlands. Upcycle old CDs into shiny baubles that can be strung up as wall decorations. Make posters and banners using scrap paper and create paper flowers from coloured pages of magazines.
Decorate with flowers
Any celebration calls for a profusion of floral decorations. Fill your home with a riot of colours: roses, dahlia, zinnia and chrysanthemums in large vases, and floral streamers with traditional flowers like marigold and jasmine at the doors and windows. A rangoli with flower petals at the doorstep is also a lovely way to get into the festive mood.
Avoid wastage of food
While your Holi table might be overflowing with goodies, this year try to be mindful of food wastage. Prepare mouthwatering delicacies in moderation and do ensure that any leftovers are donated to the needy and not thrown away.
Light up your Holi
Brighten up your home with strings of sparkling lights, and bring on the magic of the festive season! Use LED lights to save energy and reduce your power bills. Better still, recycle the terracotta lamps that you used for Diwali and light up every corner of your home with oil wick diyas. Paint the diyas using multicoloured acrylic paints, to represent the festival of colours. You can always reuse the oil that’s leftover at the end of the day.
One last word
After all the celebrations are done, please don’t forget to clean up! The eco-friendly colours you have used can be put to good use. Sweep up all the flowers and use them for composting, instead of dumping them in the garbage. Flowers add rich nutrients to the compost and can be used as manure.
This article is contributed by Dipti Das, AVP-Design, HomeLane.com.
(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of RoofandFloor)
