Text credit: Charishma Thankappan

Discarding your old, well loved, and well-worn clothes is an emotional matter. The sweater your grandmother knit for you as a child, the jacket your father bought for you when you were going for your first trip to the mountains with your friends, the skirt your mom loving sewed for you, or that ethereal lehenga that you got stitched for your sister’s wedding a few years ago and don’t fit into any more. They are not just pieces of clothes, but are a repository of your memories and an unspoiled storehouse of nostalgia.

But if you feel compelled to cast them away, having lost their purpose, you may now think again. For, the sister duo of Ayesha and Manisha Desai will help convert your beloved apparel into useful, re-purposed ware.

Founders of Cornucopia Concepts Pvt. Ltd., Ayesha and Manisha reuse, recycle, and work towards a sustainable way of life by transforming old clothes and fabrics into quilts and bedcovers. Their aim is to provide sustainable alternatives to everyday utility items through working on the principles of fair trade, sustainability and environmentally safe alternatives to plastic. Manisha looks at the designing and implementation aspect while Ayesha looks at the marketing and public relations.

In an exclusive interview with FWD Life, the enterprising sisters talk about their venture.

Why did you choose to make quilts and blankets?

We had a bunch of ‘never to be thrown’ keepsake clothes that were taking up too much cupboard space. We couldn’t bear to part with them. That’s when we realised that we can convert them into a godhadi (a patchwork quilt) – just like our grandmother did! We got to keep our clothes and were left with a really cool blanket! Interest from family and friends spurred us to make similar bedcovers and quilts for them and before we knew it we were making it commercially.

Who are your target consumers?

Anyone with a cupboard full of old clothes! We’ve has a variety of customers, a lot of parents who want to make memory quilts from their children’s clothes. Some grandparents who want to gift a memory quilt too. And then we have people who have lost their dear ones and want to preserve their memories in the form of a quilt or bedcover.

What are the challenges you face in your enterprise?

We work with people’s precious memories. Clothes that have been preserved for years, that have so much meaning and nostalgic significance. We cannot afford to make a mistake. Each piece that we create needs to be flawless. This can at times be stressful.

Do you have an in-house design team or do you work with designers from outside?

We design all our products in-house. In the future, we will be more than happy to collaborate with innovators to increase our bouquet of products.

How do you promote your initiative?

Mainly through our Facebook page and Instagram account.

Will you be expanding to more products other than quilts and blankets?

Yes, definitely. We are already making bags and rugs. But we would love to explore other media like glass and plastic – recycling and upcycling them to make utility products.

What are your inspirations?

Our grandfather. He was part of the real zero waste generation. A generation that used and reused and recycled and re-purposed long before they became cool hash tags. Ajoba, as we called him was the epitome of re-purposing and reusing. Newspapers with ads that contained blank spaces were saved to scribble his limericks on, ice cream cups were saved to be used as planters, left over marble squares from the kitchen construction were made into paper weights…. the list is endless. We grew up within this structure of using an item till its absolute last breath. And it is this very culture that we want to promote through Cornucopia. We want to encourage people to relook at their possessions in a new light. We want them to stop and think before they purchase anything new. Ask themselves if there was anything within the home that can be reused or re-purposed. Our quilts are just the beginning – to spur a conversation around re-purposing.

According to you, what are the main challenges of waste management in India, as the final waste collected from homes goes into landfills or is burnt in rural areas. What is the solution to this? Where is the government lacking?

Unchecked consumerism. Today, we don’t think twice before purchasing a product, whether it’s clothing, appliances, food, you name it. The use and throw culture is becoming rampant. Very few people opt to ‘repair’ or reuse’ or simply ‘refuse’. Having said that, the entire onus cannot be on the consumer. We need to have stringent policies on manufacturers with regards to their packaging. Each manufacturer needs to be responsible for the entire lifecycle of their product. The onus should not be only on the consumer. The government needs to put into place strong regulations on sustainable packaging.

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Plan@Earth is a Kochi based  NGO  working to make waste a resource.  Their aim is to work towards a waste-free future where utilization becomes the norm. Their core area of interests is – Recycling, Reusing, and Upcycling. Plan@Earth opens up with WtzupKochi and tells us more about how it all began and about their upcoming projects.

1. What influenced you to start this organization?-

Back in 2006 we did some Clean Ups in tourist sports with volunteers but found there was no “taker” for what is cleaned up,  again seeing the roads strewn with plastic garbage, we felt we need to get something going

2. What are the key indicators you use to measure your impact?

The number of houses, weights coming in, weights sorted, weights sent for recycling, weights sent for upcycling are few of the indicators that we use to determine the result.

3. Any specific NGOs that have influenced you to start Plan@Earth?-

Not sure about this

4. What makes you stand out from other NGOs?

We quantify and document everything we do and we have an entire operation for upcycling and recovery

5. In hindsight, what do you think of the people’s involvement in environmental initiatives and waste management? What have you learned in the process of engaging citizens?

Takes time, a community based social change takes a lot of time. It involves an unlearning first before the learning can happen, public prefers to blame authorities for whatever they generate as waste

6. What are your upcoming projects?

Mostly the upcycling project, we have an SMS reminder for households, we make the community responsible for waste its members generate, as part of the reduction strategy for plastic

7. Do you think middle-class awakening and voluntarism, which have played a major role in neighborhood waste management over the years, have died out?

Some residents do take responsibility and initiative and so far we have 24 independent residents associations that have the so-called “awakening”

8. How would you bring this activity to the attention of the society? For instance, you would want people to use cloth bags over plastic, but often, people forget about it and continue using plastic bags. How do you deal with such things?

Frankly speaking, such habits do not change overnight, even by force it won’t change, what is needed is the concern. In Kerala especially, what is lacking is the concern.

9. What are the hurdles you faced to enhance the habit of reusing and recycling?

Easy access to plastic, low cost of plastic, lack of concern

10. Does your organization have both employees and volunteers? What kind of support are you getting from the people of Kochi?

A few of them are employed, most of them are volunteers, at the grass root level- from door to door collection, sorting etc. We have SHG models. Public support from the people of Kochi? Oh yes, we get some “likes” on our FB page.

11. You are doing great in Kochi. Do you have any plans for expanding your business to other cities?

Not too keen on expanding, because, it takes too much of a toll on our energy and leaves us drained. It is an uphill struggle and since neither the state nor the central govt has no intention of funding such operations, we have no plans to expand.

12. Do you think people have started changing? How do you gain support from the community?

Yes, the change has definitely started but like I said it is a change that moves at snail’s pace.

13. Your NGO is also associated with social entrepreneurship like promoting or selling eco-friendly bags. Who is your target audience? How is the response? 

Our target audience is mostly college students and parents of school kids.The response is very heartening.

     14. What significant changes do you foresee in the near future?

 Not in the near future, but in the distant future people would accept that global warming, climate change, pollution, deforestation are all happening for real. But by then it could be too take. Okhi was enough writing on the wall, it’s almost like people are waiting for a major calamity before they actually realize that we ourselves are killing our marine life, polluting our oceans and the Delhi air pollution is not too distant from happening in Kochi.

Let us all try and contribute our little bit towards making this world a better place to live in.

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