On a sunny afternoon in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, a group of students gathers around a shallow water body, their eyes fixed on a thick green mat floating on the surface. At first glance, it looks serene — glossy leaves, purple flowers, and dragonflies weaving through the stalks. But for 25-year-old ecologist Sushmita Krishnan, this is not a picture of calm. It’s a warning sign.

“I often hear people say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful plant!’ But water hyacinth is invasive. It chokes lakes, kills biodiversity, and keeps coming back,” she explains.

This tension between beauty and destruction is what drew Sushmita to the plant in the first place. Determined to find a sustainable solution, she began experimenting with its fibrous stems — and discovered that they could be transformed into strong, biodegradable, handmade paper.

What began as an academic curiosity has now grown into something far bigger. Sushmita isn’t just making paper — she’s building a grassroots model that combines science, sustainability, and community training to tackle one of India’s most stubborn aquatic weeds.

Seeing the problem beneath the surface

Sushmita’s interest in ecology began early. Through her life sciences education, she found herself drawn to the complex relationships between species and ecosystems. But it was during her internship at the Indian Institute of Science in 2021 that something shifted.

“I was working on insect pests and the economic losses they caused. That’s when I first started looking closely at invasive species,” she recalls.

One such species was water hyacinth. While some researchers praised its ability to purify water by absorbing heavy metals, others raised concerns about its impact on native biodiversity. The conflicting opinions intrigued her — and left her with more questions than answers.

“Water hyacinth has two faces, even in research,” she says. “Technologists see it as a boon because it phytoremediates water. But ecologists see it as a threat. It spreads fast and suffocates everything else.”

In places like Karnataka, it was even introduced deliberately, with the hope that it would help clean polluted water bodies. But its rapid multiplication soon made it unmanageable.

Meanwhile, in states like Assam and Tamil Nadu, small communities had begun using water hyacinth to make crafts like baskets and bags. But these efforts, while creative, weren’t easy to scale. “It was time-consuming work, and people weren’t buying those products in large numbers,” Sushmita explains.

The plant that refuses to die

It didn’t take long for Sushmita to realise that water hyacinth wasn’t just a local nuisance — it was a large-scale........

© The Better India