Upcycling Towards an EcoSocial Planet

[Music]

hi everyone

can you guess what this is made of

no or this

no i’ll tell you

it’s made of this our plastic waste

plastic grocery bags or

these glittery gift wrappers this is

what we wrap our gifts in right

we use it once and then just threw it

away

or it’s made of all these

multi-layered wrappers which again our

food comes in

or other articles that we use in our

home

comes in and we just use it once and

thrown away

that’s what we do at richard we

upcycle all these plastic waste into all

these gorgeous products

that we see right behind me with all

our single use plastic waste

what we do is it’s not just a recycling

or upcycling process it is

also where we are trying to provide

livelihoods

for the tribals and needy people in

remote

rural areas of india and that’s why

ecosocial tribe was born one to conserve

the environment

and two to create livelihoods how do we

do this

we collect plastic waste

in the cities like pune and mumbai and

silvassa

we gather all that plastic waste we wash

and sanitize it

we then take it to our remote village

where the

fabric making process happens here

we use just a pair of scissors and we

manually cut

each and every plastic bag or each and

every wrapper

just using these scissors after that we

use a traditional

charcoal that’s what we call it

in india the english name is spindle

so we use a spindle and a hand loom

to weave it and convert it into a fabric

now this entire process is manual

because

we had decided to create likelihoods

hence we kept the process manual

once that happens once the fabric is

created we then take it

to our workshop which is located here in

pune

and we convert them into various

products that you can see here

now why are we doing this

most of the plastic waste which we are

typically using today

is very low quality of plastic

and its one time use and throw so that

is why whenever you are traveling around

you end up seeing all this waste right

so this waste

is there because it is of no value

waste such as bottles and containers

does get recycled

but low value plastic waste like the

ones that we use

is not recyclable and hence it is just

thrown away

and hence you see all of this garbage

lying here and there on nooks and

corners of the city

or remotest villages or remotest mounted

tops

so what happened is uh when i was uh

just a child maybe i was just about you

know 15 16 years old

i had uh studied it in my textbook that

plastic is not degradable

and then i kept reading about it and you

know studying about it and i realized

that

it is not degradable then why are we

using it

that’s when we also had a science

competition

in our you know at the nagar availi

level which is our state where i

grew up there was a competition and i

participated in that competition and

that’s when i

uh found out more because i took uh my

topic of

specific conference was waste management

and solid waste management

so i took up that topic i researched a

lot we didn’t have internet then so we

had to go through libraries and

tons of books and talk to all kinds of

people so i did a lot of market research

i did a lot of research

and you know a lot of my teachers helped

me with that

and at the end of it i really give a

good

uh you know i was i did quite well at

the conference and at the competition

and i also won an award

but i didn’t just leave it at that i

kept this

in my mind that why are we using plastic

and i

myself stopped using plastic from during

approximately during that time i’m not

seeing all kinds of plastic because

that’s

uh impossible to do but i’m talking

about the disposable plastic such as the

plastic bags and the wrappers of

different types

and i kept telling that into my in my

family you know that why should we not

use disposables you know disposable

containers cutlery and things like that

so it was for me it was not enough

it was not enough to keep it just within

my family but i wanted to spread that

message

across and a lot of my you know school

friends and teachers might agree with

this

even the shopkeepers where i used to go

as a child

i used to always tell them that oh yeah

don’t give me your plastic bags you know

so i used to take care of that as much

as possible so

that’s when it actually bore in my mind

that this is not good for us

and this is what we must avoid as i grew

up

um i didn’t know that this could be a

career right oh

you know it was not a career or it was

not taken to as

a very interesting career to do so i

went on to do my regular

i was an i.t engineer i you know i

studied uh

engineering um from pune as well as

ended up with a job

a very interesting job here in union uh

that’s when i realized

while i was at the company called kpit i

realized there’s something called a csr

which is corporate social responsibility

and under csr there are activities which

are

taken by the company to solve certain

environmental and social problems

and i got really excited about it and i

enrolled myself as a volunteer

and i did a lot of activities enjoyed

doing all these activities did a lot of

implemented a lot of projects

while i was there and that’s when i

realized that this is what i want to do

full-time

and i still remember my conversation

with my you know my boss at that time

and when i told him that i want to do

this

he suggested me why don’t you go and do

a master’s then

and i took his advice and i decided to

take up a masters program

i went uh to the us for my masters

and at that point in time my university

where i got admitted which was the folio

university did not have a specific

course that i could take

in this specific subject so i decided to

take a management degree and

you know ended up with a lot of subjects

which i took as electives

and finished my masters

with a focus on csr and i resulted in a

job

in chicago i worked there for a few

years and that’s when i

actually dived into this topic of csr

and sustainability

and i also got to know very very

interesting things

specifically that what corporates can do

and what large impacts can they create

if they adopt sustainability themselves

this was in about 2010 and that’s when

approximately

um the csr and sustainability reporting

system

was made a compulsion um for a certain

you know level of companies and above so

i worked with

uh multiple uh fortune 500 companies

and helped them implement their csr

reports and

i really was very happy with the fact

that

if a company if a large fortune 500

company

takes even one step towards

sustainability it

could really create a large impact and i

was happy to be a part of that impact

but that did not keep me satisfied

because i wanted to do something

hands-on

and hence in 2013 i decided to move back

to my own country

to india and while i came back to india

um i was you know i took up a break for

a couple of years and i traveled across

i took up some consulting projects as

well but while traveling across

india i had decided that i’m going to

find a few problems

which i really really want to spend my

life trying to solve them

right that was my goal and i actually

did that you know

for two years i traveled i wrote a lot i

wrote a lot of reports

i understood the core problems there are

a lot of problems of course education

health these are problems and these are

being taken care of by

multiple organizations but waste

management

and sanitation was a problem which

wasn’t taken care of

so much at that point in time right

there were organizations and government

who were trying to do their best

but it was always at a lower priority

because health and education were at a

higher priority right

so if i took up waste management and i

started talking about it

people used to be like who is she just

just come back from the us and she’s

giving us a lecture on waste management

when we have problems of thinking or

dealing with

where the next meal is going to come

from that’s when i realized

that this is not the only problem i need

to solve

the other problem that i also need to

look up look

at and work towards is the problem of

livelihoods and livelihoods

not just in cities and urban areas

because it’s

sort of taken care of in the urban areas

there are options which people can take

uh if not this the other job will work

out or there are something or the other

that they can do and

you know also find out you know at least

take care of their next meal

but in remote rural and tribal areas

livelihoods was a bigger problem most of

the families in rural india

do do agriculture but it is done only

for four to six months

in a year which is mostly rain fed which

is dependent on the monsoons

so if the monsoons are good people

continue to do the agriculture but it

happens only for four to six months if

monsoons aren’t good they lose

even that crop that they would have

otherwise gotten

so it is very very um risky and very

very tricky uh so what i decided that

we’ll take up one village and try to you

know set up

this uh you know something over there

which we could

help solve the problem of livelihood but

also

solve the problem of waste management

and that’s where my

passion for plastic waste came into the

picture again

i decided um to you know

decided to research on what can be done

with this low value plastic

and uh you know i traveled again uh

quite a lot did

uh met a lot of ngos and companies who

were doing

something similar but at a different

scale

i decided to adopt that and

interestingly what came out of it

was a handicraft which could be created

with this waste plastic

and why did we choose handicraft because

other than agriculture the second

largest

employer in india used to be craft and

handicraft because it could be done

anywhere even in remote villages

it didn’t have to have industries or it

didn’t have to have industrial townships

or

electricity or heat so we just thought

that

okay it’s a small village that i had

near my hometown

why don’t we start it there and that’s

when our first hand loom was set up

and our first uh two employees who

joined us at that point in time kumbha

and kiran

they came and they started you know

helping me to come up with this whole uh

you know new craft

which we had definitely seen at other

places but we had to

invent something new with it and we

actually decided to do that

we came up with a fabric and we were so

so excited to do that

so what we did was on the hand looms and

on the charcoals

we created a fabric and that was

like a hooray moment for us and uh in

pune we also found a few very very uh

efficient uh tailors who could make

products for us from that

and that was it and we really launched

our product and it took

up a lot of time it took about more than

a year for us to do this entire

process but at the end of it it was an

interesting

product that came out and you know then

the next step for us which we had

anyways started doing in parallel

was market research because we didn’t

want to be dependent on

you know any donations at that point in

time uh because i wanted to make this

into a market driven movement

that we make products which people need

on a day-to-day basis like a laptop

sleeve or a tote or a purse which people

will anyways go and buy from the market

so what if we create a product which

people can use on a day-to-day basis

and that’s what we launched the product

and the market really liked it

and the people who bought it our

supporters they

you were so so happy by looking at the

product that they really liked it and

we started getting orders from customers

from corporates

from resellers we started exporting and

even now we

are really uh happy with the support

that we’ve been getting

and we look forward to a bright future

we also are thinking of you know

expanding our craft and doing more

research and development

in this sector to see what other kinds

of waste can we

um you know taken into the picture so

we’ve started taking in other ways such

as pvc

bubble wraps or foam also to

use in our products uh along with this

we also

are experimenting different kinds of

crafts

and for this we have set up an ngo a

non-profit organization

in which we we have called as my

ecosocial planet

and the my ecosocial planet foundation

is going to work

on research and development of different

types of waste we are also going to work

on

a lot of awareness generation activities

because we want people to understand

that this is not a solution

creation of waste in the first place

should be stopped or should be slowed

down because with the population

that we are exploring with it’s

impossible that we will be able to

recycle or upcycle all the waste

so refuse is the best best mantra

the second is reduce third

is reuse and only then it’s recycle or

upcycle

that’s what we believe in and we want to

pass on this awareness to all the

citizens in cities in villages

and try to create you know a more

cleaner

environment for all of us to live on the

third thing that our ngo is also going

to do

is to um collect waste so we are

planning to do waste management

activities

we are planning to do composting

workshops and

you know make sure that as much as

possible waste is streamlined in the

right direction

uh as a result we have called it my

ecosocial planet

and it’s my planet it’s not somebody

else’s it’s mine

hence we’ve named it as my ecosocial

planet and the richard khan

are going to work hand in hand are

working hand in hand to see how we can

try to

um upcycle waste create livelihoods as

well as create a product which people

can use

and trying to create the entire

ecosystem

where as much as possible upcycling is

supported recycling is supported

and with this i would really you know

leave

all of you with this message that let’s

think

on our own consumption patterns let’s

think what are we using

are we using something which is going to

make a difference to someone

or are we using uh something which is

just going to use

be used once and thrown away you know we

should really think about

consumerism is not all that bad but only

if we decide to do it in the right

direction

i think it will really create a really

really

better planet for us and our future

generations to live on

hence i would like to take this

opportunity to

thank you all uh viewers of tedx

uh thank you to the goa engineering

college who gave me this opportunity to

speak here

and hope that we all create a better

planet for all of us