Gaurav Anand, a 46-year-old in eastern India's Jharkhand found out an innovative way to deal with the problem of water hyacinths. How? He makes sarees out of them which not only is unique but also provides employment opportunities to rural women.

The saree-making takes place in Santipur city in eastern India's West Bengal. The visuals were shot on May 12.

Visuals show the making of such sarees where a woman was seen first extracting the fibre. Next, the process of making the saree was shown. Also known as the 'terror of Bengal', water hyacinths are bad for aquatic life. It also deteriorates the quality of water in a pond where it grows. In the past, water hyacinths have been used to make items like mats, paper among other things but Gaurav decided to take it a level higher by making sarees out of it.


Reports say, "Water hyacinth is known as the terror of Bengal. This weed grows in still pond water, and almost every household here has a pond in their backyard. Aquatic life can survive only when dissolved oxygen in water is at least five mg per litre, but it decreases to one mg per litre in the presence of water hyacinth. This threatens aquatic life and deteriorates water quality. It is a global phenomenon," Anand said, adding, "“I wanted to come up with a sustainable solution to the growing problem of water hyacinth so that people do not see it as a nuisance but as a resource. We use 25 kg of water hyacinth to make one fusion saree."

It was during Anand's stint with TATA steel when he came across the problem of water hyacinths while being part of river cleaning drives. He had the chance to work on a month-long mission to clean the river Ganga. He says that he dedicated every Sunday towards making an effort of cleaning other rivers after the mission.

He then took this work up as full-time, quitting his job in 2022 and founding the Swachhata Pukare Foundation. "While working on such products, I found that the pulp of these plants contains cellulose, which can be converted into yarn, similar to jute. A personal contact of mine connected me with weavers who implemented our idea into yarn. This is when we started fusing the material with cotton to make saree," he said.

The process is unique but far from easy. Stems of the water hyacinths are collected and dried in the sun for a week. While talking about the process of making sarees out of water hyacinths, Anand said, "We keep the soft cover of the stem to make paper while we use the pulp to make fibre. Fibre from the stem is extracted after hot water treatment to remove insects from the pulp. These fibres are used to make yarn, which is then coloured. Weavers then weave the saree on a handloom. They need around three to four days to make one saree. It is a first-of-its-kind product in the world."

The ratio for water hyacinth has been kept at 25:75 as it is labour-intensive work. A saree made entirely out of water hyacinth would be weak and thus it needs to be fused with other materials. But Anand stated that he plans to increase the water hyacinth quantity to 50% to make it more sustainable. "We can increase the ratio but for that, we will have to extract numerous stems, which will increase our cost of production which is Rs 1,200 per saree. The finer the fibre, the more the cost. Currently, we have priced our saree at Rs 2,000–3,500 so that it is affordable for middle-income groups as well. We have been able to sustain the business so far,” he added.

Through Gaurav's innovation, 10 weaver families from West Bengal's Santipur village have had the chance of improving their economic status. Apart from them, an additional 450 women too have been employed to collect water hyacinths and process them before they are sent to the weavers.

Since 2022, Gaurav has been able to make 50 such sarees and he plans on doing 1,000 more by the end of the year.