YOU say good-bye to your beloved Ganesha, who you treated like a King for three days. You prayed to him, fed him, called family, friends and strangers over to admire him and take his blessings.

But did you know that the beaches and riverbanks are dirty for days after Visarjan? The water gets toxic with idol remains, plastic garlands, coconuts, crowns and what not.

So if you don't want to destroy nature completely, it is time to get eco-friendly!

Manisha Gutman the founder of E-Coexist, a social enterprise in Pune, which works towards making Ganesh Chaturthi an environmentally friendly festival, tells you how to have an eco-friendly Ganapati this year.

Say no to POP

Today Ganesha idols are being made from plaster of Paris (POP). But if you are planning to go eco-friendly this year, ditch the plaster of Paris and go with the traditional material, shaanu, which is clay that you find in Gujarat and West Bengal.

Plaster of Paris is made out of chemicals that are acidic. So you can just imagine what it is doing to our environment. Clay on the other hand, is just mud. It is completely natural! So when it dissolves in the water, it doesn't harm it in any way.

Also POP takes many days to dissolve, but clay, gets dissolves in a matter of hours. So you won't have your idol floating ashore the next day.

Click here to view our gallery of Ganesha

Eco-friendly colours

Also make sure that the colours used on the idol are not chemical based. These days the idol makers think that by using watercolours and not oil paints they are saving the environment. But watercolours are not free from chemicals either.

For eco-friendly idols, multani mithi is used as beige colour for the skin of the idol. Turmeric is used for the yellow paint and vegetable dyes are used for other colours.

Also avoid using stones to decorate the Ganesha crown etc. This way you know that your idol is completely natural.