The students of Connecting Dreams Foundation, SRCC have come up with an evergreen solution for this problem. Their brand, Esscent by Arpan, is a line of premium flower-based incense sticks that are made from dried flower waste and are 100% charcoal free.
They started with the identification of the problem. Burning of regular incense sticks releases carbon dioxide and hazardous carbon monoxide because of the presence of charcoal. However, after extensive research they discovered that flower waste can be substituted as a component in place of charcoal. This prohibits the release of hazardous carbon monoxide. After performing market analysis, they validated their idea by developing a formula and conducted research and lab testing at Patel Chest Institute. The transformation of flower waste to incense sticks takes place in multiple stages which includes collection and solar drying of flower waste, combining different components to obtain the paste, hand rolling of incense sticks and finally packing them in eco-friendly boxes.