The school children carried placards with messages and shouting slogans requesting people to celebrate festivals in an environment-friendly fashion, to immerse the Ganesha statues in allotted places, and also reminding the people about the harm caused to the environment by statues painted with chemical-based colours.

Walking all over town, they visited every house and informed the residents about the dangers of using painted statues.

Bindushree a ninth-standard student, said they would tell the people that the statues are painted with attractive colours that contain metals like lead, zinc, nickel, cadmium and manganese. Immersing such statues in a water body will pollute the water. Consuming such water will make both humans and cattle ill. “We will request people to prefer statues without any paint and decorate them with flowers instead,” she said.

CMCA teacher G Manjunath said this was a campaign of students in improving civic sense. The statues should be immersed in vehicles allotted especially for the purpose. Water is precious. It should not be polluted but used economically. “The CMCA Gandhiji Civic Club was started to spread such messages among the people through the voice of children,” Manjunath said.

All the students have promised to use colourless statues of Ganesha in their houses, he added.

School headmaster H V Muniraju, teachers K Ravi, A Srinivas and others participated in the campaign.