But now, one company is giving

a second life to these sacred flowers,

collecting more than 12 tons of them from temples

and transforming them into handmade incense sticks.

But can this blossoming startup make an impact

on India's flower waste problem?

We visited the headquarters of Phool in Kanpur to find out.

It all starts in bustling wholesale markets,

like the one in Shivalaya.

Merchants pick up the flowers that they'll sell

outside Hindu temples.

Because these flowers are used in rituals,

they're considered sacred

and can't be thrown into the garbage.

Every day, more than 1,000 tons of flowers

end up in the Ganges River.

But many contain toxic chemicals

like arsenic, lead, and cadmium, as well as pesticides.

I have been seeing people putting flowers

in the water all my life.

But never before had anyone questioned temple waste

as a source of pollution.

The seed was sown.

Ankit founded Phool,

which is the Hindi word for flower.

The company's employees pick up the waste from temples

throughout Kanpur, making around 19 stops a day.

Then they transport the flowers to Phool's facility,

where they weigh and separate them

from thread, fabric, and plastic.

Workers save only the flower petals for the incense sticks

and sort them by color.

They keep the buds and stems to create compost

that is sold as a separate product.

Then they lay the flower petals out to dry on large tarps.

Once they're dry, they grind them into a powder

that is mixed by hand with water and essential oils

until it reaches a claylike texture.

Then it's time to roll.

Workers dip their fingers into the flower powder

while rolling to create an even thickness.

Then they let the sticks dry

before dipping them again in essential oils.

They're laid out to dry one more time,

then packaged up.

Workers here can produce around

400 incense sticks every hour.

Ankit calls this transformation flower-cycling.

And he says his product is cleaner than others.

Normally, incense sticks are made from charcoal.

Burning charcoal releases the poisonous sulfur dioxide

and gives out a lot of xylene chemicals.

In the beginning, Ankit's family

and friends doubted his business.

When I decided to quit my job

and come back to Kanpur, the reaction of

the immediate people I knew was I had gone bonkers.

That I want to leave a job as an automation scientist

and work with temple flowers.

He also had to convince the temples

to give his business their sacred flower waste.

But he says they didn't initially trust him.

There's this line in the Hindu Arti that says

"Tera tujhko arpan,"

which basically means what belongs to the gods

goes back to the gods.

So this is how I used to convince them

that these flowers don't belong to you or me --

they belong to the gods.

And we're using it for the purpose of making incense,

which is again being used for worshipping the gods.

Ankit also wants to find

other ways of recycling the flowers.

He started a research lab to develop new products.

They're testing vegan leather

and a biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam.

But those aren't ready for sale.

Still, floral waste makes up only about 16% of pollution

that runs into the Ganges.

Harmful chemicals, open sewer drainage,

and garbage run directly into the river.

That's a growing danger for the more than 400 million people

that rely on the river for drinking water.

And despite best efforts to save the Ganges,

it's a long way from being restored

to anything like its headwaters in the icy Himalayas.

Ankit knows his startup can't clean up the river on its own,

but he thinks he can help create awareness about a problem

he says has been ignored.

And he's setting goals to grow

his production and waste collection.

Our target is to at least have 50 tons of flowers

across five locations in the country

to be able to employ 1,000 women.

For now, every stick sold

is infused with the smell of success.