Value-added products and exquisite artworks made from water hyacinth by a team of faculty and students representing the Centre for Research on Aquatic Resources at Sanatana Dharma (SD) College, Alappuzha, and EichhoTech, a student start-up based in the college, were exhibited at an exhibition held at Sirpur Lake, a Ramsar site, near Indore in Madhya Pradesh recently.
The event was organised by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in association with the Madhya Pradesh government and Indore municipal corporation as part of World Wetlands’ Day 2024. The SD College team was specially invited to the exhibition by the Union Ministry to showcase their products.
The team was led by G. Nagendra Prabhu, head, Post Graduate Department of Zoology and principal investigator at the Centre for Research on Aquatic Resources.
A new series of digital printouts on hand-made paper from water hyacinth, an invasive weed that chokes waterbodies, on the theme ‘women empowerment using water hyacinth’ conceived and created by Anoop Kumar V., founder and chief executive officer of EichhoTech, was unveiled by Musonda Mumba, secretary general of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, based in Gland, Switzerland during the exhibition.
The secretary general was presented with designer gifts including her portrait printed on hand-made paper from water hyacinth as well as her name specially embroidered using fine thread from dried water hyacinth stem.
