Help Us Green have sent four samples of temple flower incense for review. When they wrote offering the samples, I responded that I am very interested in the use of recycled temple flowers in incense, and mentioned Phool as the pioneers. They wrote back to clarify that they started out as Phool, but that over time the venture evolved, and is now Help Us Green under Karan Rastogi. This made me think that Phool had changed their name, but further research indicated that Phool was still going, but in 2019 a few years after setting up the company, founders Karan Rastogi and Ankit Agarwal split, with Agarwal retaining the Phool name, and Rastogi taking the Help Us Green name. Both companies make incense by using recycled temple flowers as a replacement combustible, as well as exploring other uses for the flowers, such as for fertiliser and an eco-friendly styrofoam.
The presentation is similar to Phool, with a colourful slide out packet and a free wooden incense stick holder. The Phool designs I find more attractive, and the Phool incense holders are better quality. On the whole there's not much in it, though Phool comes across as more luxurious and more helpful, with an informative leaflet inside. The Help Us Green packets are attractive, but do feel like cheaper and cruder copies, albeit coming from one of the two founders of Phool.
It is somewhat unfortunate that all of the samples are mono-scents, which are not among my favourite types of incense (though there are plenty of exceptions!), and two happen to be floral scents, again not among my favourites. I like the scent of rose flowers in the garden - catching that heady drift when walking past. But in concentrated form in perfume or incense I tend to find rose to be a little sickly, and with poor associations. This rose stick does have a heady and somewhat typical room freshener rose scent. Hmmm. I like it, yet am somewhat repelled at the same time. It is distinctly rose, with elements of rose tea (I like the balancing bitterness of black tea in the fragrance) and Turkish delight. But it is rather sickly in its narrow and somewhat intense olfactory range. I think this incense will be fairly divisive - some loving it, some hating it. I'm kind of in the middle.
It burns reasonably well without the dirty-water off-notes I associate with Phool. It produces a familiar perfumed-incense experience. Quite acceptable. Not profound, but not unpleasant either. It is clearly a rose incense. A decent everyday room freshener incense with the benefit of helping manage the pollution of the rivers in India. If someone likes perfumed rose incense, and is faced with the choice of this or an incense which doesn't use recycled flowers, then - other than price - there is no reason not to choose this one. It works the same as any other similar incense. That I'm not a fan of perfumed rose incense so am not going to score this high, shouldn't be taken as a criticism of this incense. This is a decent incense which is doing the right thing. And full credit for that, if not for the choice of fragrance oil.
The presentation is similar to Phool, with a colourful slide out packet and a free wooden incense stick holder. The Phool designs I find more attractive, and the Phool incense holders are better quality. On the whole there's not much in it, though Phool comes across as more luxurious and more helpful, with an informative leaflet inside. The Help Us Green packets are attractive, but do feel like cheaper and cruder copies, albeit coming from one of the two founders of Phool.
It is somewhat unfortunate that all of the samples are mono-scents, which are not among my favourite types of incense (though there are plenty of exceptions!), and two happen to be floral scents, again not among my favourites. I like the scent of rose flowers in the garden - catching that heady drift when walking past. But in concentrated form in perfume or incense I tend to find rose to be a little sickly, and with poor associations. This rose stick does have a heady and somewhat typical room freshener rose scent. Hmmm. I like it, yet am somewhat repelled at the same time. It is distinctly rose, with elements of rose tea (I like the balancing bitterness of black tea in the fragrance) and Turkish delight. But it is rather sickly in its narrow and somewhat intense olfactory range. I think this incense will be fairly divisive - some loving it, some hating it. I'm kind of in the middle.
It burns reasonably well without the dirty-water off-notes I associate with Phool. It produces a familiar perfumed-incense experience. Quite acceptable. Not profound, but not unpleasant either. It is clearly a rose incense. A decent everyday room freshener incense with the benefit of helping manage the pollution of the rivers in India. If someone likes perfumed rose incense, and is faced with the choice of this or an incense which doesn't use recycled flowers, then - other than price - there is no reason not to choose this one. It works the same as any other similar incense. That I'm not a fan of perfumed rose incense so am not going to score this high, shouldn't be taken as a criticism of this incense. This is a decent incense which is doing the right thing. And full credit for that, if not for the choice of fragrance oil.
Date: May 2025 Score: 27
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