Realistic Tips to Celebrate Sustainable Holi

“Bura na mano, Holi hai.”

Or the age-old cry of “don’t be offended, it’s Holi.” It is ringing in every part of India and every place where Indians are. Yet are you scared to go out and celebrate- concerned about the environmental impact of this festival? Especially when water crisis in major cities are rising like tidal waves?

Well, the internet is there to your rescue with its tips on how to celebrate a green and dry Holi. From woven cloth balloons replacing plastic water balloons to upcycled colours and returning to communal symbolic Holika Dahan over small bonfires, there is no end of tips for an eco-friendly Holi.

I am not here to add to those tips. I would rather tell you how to be more eco-friendly in your Holi celebrations without feeling burnt-out. Aka a realistically sustainable Holi.

As someone who grew up loving the waterworks, rain dancing, colour fights, and overall celebration that is Holi, I struggle with sharing tips on how to make it more eco-friendly. If I feel that if skipping the rain dance is a sacrifice then how can I ask others to do so? I can’t.

Yet the environmentalist in me will not let me waste water or throw toxins in the air in the name of celebration either.

So what do I do? Sit and cry caught in the anguish of wanting to join the Holi celebrations but stopped by my morals?

Of course not. That’s not healthy sustainable living. Isolating myself and denying myself the joys of a festival I love will not reverse climate change. Actions to make the festival more eco-friendly will. And as Isabelle Dury says in Finding Sanity, community interaction is one of the best ways to fight against climate change.

So here’s how to be an imperfect environmentalist this Holi.

Imperfect Sustainability Tips for Holi

Do Not Throw Away the Clothes You Wear for Holi

Now, I don’t know about you but in my family, we do not wear new or even “good” clothes on Holi. No, the clothes we are most likely to discard get worn for Holi. Yet, wouldn’t it be more sustainable to donate those clothes? Perhaps. However, if you continue to wear your Holi clothes beyond Holi or repurpose them, that is sustainable too.

And who says the clothes can’t be washed and donated after Holi? The idea that Holi clothing is no longer aesthetic is the problem and one that I phased out this year. After all, it’s just colors! And if you can’t wear them again, those clothes make for great pochas or mops to clean your floors. My mother has been repurposing clothes like that all her life.

Let’s Talk Colour

Now the best way to go about it is to use toxin-free, earth-safe colours when playing Holi. Organic ones are promoted by a lot of people as better but Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data shared in her book Not the End of the World that organic can cause the same issues in our water systems as pesticides if excessive manure is used and organic farming is more land-intensive. Yet, the team at Coco Custo, an eco-friendly chemical free detergent brand in Mumbai, also shared a peer-reviewed article that showed the methane emissions of artificial fertilizer factories in the US. Methane is much more powerful greenhouse gas when compared to Co2 and we can not forget the biodiversity loss of pollinators and insects.

Aka, there is no perfectly sustainable answer unless we reduce, and reuse, and make paint from temple flowers, and such upcycled innovations. EcoNimrit, available at Ecofreaky, despite being organic, is using flowers from Mahakal temple adding more spirituality to your play. And who can forget Phool Co.?

Organic colours are better for your skin so we won’t say they’re all a scam but organizations like Hum Pritvi Se are heing people return to making clours out of flowers that have fallen naturally or skin-safe food coloruing about to go waste. Just avoid the chilli.

And one organization that claims to be helping women and the planet with their Holi products is Terra Co, so you can check them and their upcycled colors, food based colors (here’s hoping no edible food was used), metal pickharis painted by specially abled kids, and traditional sustainable celebrations. While green capitalism will not save us, when we must buy, let’s try and choose more and more ethical brands when we can.

Me? I am just reusing what I have left from 2023 that hasn’t gone bad. Those colours have been part of my Diwali rangolis as well!

Using roli and chandan from the mandir can be an option too but I am not courageous enough to ask my mother if hers are eco-friendly. Are you?

Though, now that I am married and living in my own household, I know I got semi-susty puja samagri or I get greenwashed. Moving on…

It’s Time to Dance…In the Rain

Now look, I can replace my water balloons with cloth ones or even forsake them entirely. I have not touched a plastic pickari or a plastic water gun in years. However, dancing with my friends while water pours on us, now that is something I can’t give up…yet. Or perhaps ever. And in the world of imperfect sustainable living, that is okay, but not the best because we need to conserve fresh waste. Sure, it is about doing what you can yet some actions such eating plant-based, seasonal and in line with your ecosystems or trying to use clean electricity when viable or reducing flights unless adding immense value or asking for systemic change do more than others. Thus, if you are like me, you don’t want to waste water, especially when there are so many water crises. So what can we do?

Well, you can reuse your pickaris and water guns, but you can’t reuse water…or can you? Replace filling buckets with water and throwing them on one another, with dancing in a garden that needs watering. Then you can dance as the grass and plants are watered, as long as you are careful not to crush any plants. It is not a perfect solution….so if you have a better one, please let me know in the comments below.

And if there is a rain dance going to happen in your complex, whether you like it or not, just go join. And then annoy whoever is in charge by asking how is the water being reused and circled back into ground water or a closed loop system. Systemic change! Or you can protest the rain dance, or it being wasteful and ask for circular systems, like I just said.

Given that Bangalore, one of the major cities in our nation, is going through a severe water crisis though…these celebrations feel a little tone-deaf, which is why I will try to stick to dry colours as far as possible this year. I love that Phoolo ki Holi is gaining popularity again. Because while having fun and preserving the “good” aspects of our culture is important, so is conserving resources.

After all, the main ingredient of Holi is to celebrate with those you love. So if your eco-friendly brain won’t let you do much but you still feel blue, just give your loved ones a hug, donate some sweets, and dance in your room with some haldi on your face as Raang Barsi and Balam Pichkari play. Just make sure you don’t have dry skin, apparently haldi dries it further.

Having these choices and celebrations is a privilege. With that privilege comes a responsibility- to strike a need between our happiness and that of the planet. So, if you are wondering how to make your Holi celebrations green, get those cloth balloons, have a dry Holi, as sustainable a rasoi as possible, and a communal Holikadahan which does not burn much because burning items releases CO2 into the atmosphere and while once in a while would have been fine, doing it all over Northern India with a separate bonfire in every housing society seems like not the most eco-solution. But I am not here to tell you how to observe your traditions, even if I urge you to be kind to animals while playing Holi and not putting harmful colors on them or harass others. Tail_of_tails on Instagram has a great video on this topic.

Take the best practices from our tradition and return to them. Innovate where it can grow. But if you are like me and struggling to strike that chord between eco-friendliness and joy, welcome. We at Anjali’s Musings believe in the power or trying and building sustainable habits to prevent burning out from trying to do everything. And to avoid falling into the fallacy of doing something which is an enormous sacrifice but doesn’t have much positive impact and then ignoring what we could have done with a larger impact or even harming ourselves. A sustainable holi is possible with creators like Sonika Basin sharing tips on how, and a sustainable life can be tailored to your needs at Anjali’s Musings. To aid in the same, we are doing a webinar (email at roongta.bw.anjali@gmail.com to book one) to show you how to track viable sustainable changes to turn them into a lifestyle. Or you can simply buy the low-waste planner we made on recycled paper to aid you in that.

Let me know in the comments what you did to have fun without taxing Planet Earth.

Updated- 12/03/2025

Author’s Note: Hopefully this blog helped you feel more at peace and make your Holi celebrations greener. A comment, a share, or a YouTube subscription, goes a long way in helping me making this a full-time career. And if you decide to pay what you can, that is always welcome. Happy holi, let’s spread some cheer in our communities. Realistically.