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