· Can Water Hyacinth stem be processed and turn into beautiful hand woven sarees which will help employment in Goa?
· What are we waiting for????
· NGO’s are up for the challenge???
This is not water lily, but the common water hyacinth. Beautiful flowers, however, it is a highly invasive plant, when it escapes into the wild. It's seen spreading like a carpet on the Sal River. It blocks out all sunlight to other aquatic life, thereby killing it.
In West Bengal there is start up where Water Hyacinth stem are processed and turn into beautiful hand-woven sarees there up helping local ladies with employment.
Anything on these lines can be done in Goa from the River Sal Water Hyacinth?
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Water hyacinth, scientifically known as Eichhornia crassipes Mart. (Pontederiaceae), is an aquatic weed common in waterbodies across South Asia, including India.
This is not an indigenous species but was introduced to India during the British colonial rule as an ornamental aquatic plant from South America. The plant produces beautiful purple flowers that have high aesthetic value.
This simple, floating aquatic plant, unfortunately, is also an obnoxious weed that has been suffocating surface freshwater sources like rivers, rivulets, streams, ponds, dams, lakes and bogs, making the waterbodies unsuitable for commercial fishery, transportation and recreation.
It is an expensive and labour-intensive process to remove this weed from time to time.
But there is one bright side. Bikram Mitra from Kolkata, West Bengal has made an outstanding example by utilising this obnoxious aquatic weed plant to develop small-scale cottage industry that is both financially rewarding as well as environmentally friendly in approach.
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