Challenges facing a 'green' business like us

After participating in a few exhibitions and the responses we got from the stores, these are some of the challenges we were confronted with:

• High price concern – Our target market is middle income households of housewives and the youth. People have had this false impression of recycled eco friendly products being low priced ever since the inception of the ‘green’ concept. It was not that easy to explain to the consumers that even though the raw material is bought at a low value, the time spent in processing it and making it usable adds a chunk to the labour cost. Employing all handmade processes also contributes to the high price factor.

• Negative notion of products being made from scrap – A lot of people were hesitant to buy products as they termed it as “stuff made from kachra”. That was rather a very unexpected notion we faced.

• Procuring & upcycling the right kind of scrap – Procuring waste & making it usable by employing eco-friendly methods as opposed to treating it with chemicals was challenging too. For instance, a few friends suggested reusing old VHS tapes (the black tape in video cassettes). It sounded like a good idea as these tapes are strong and flexible. Upon researching about them, I found out that their direct exposure to skin is hazardous in the long run. So we need to be very careful in procuring the right kind of waste.

• Converting the scrap into an object which doesn’t let the viewer guess that its actually an upcycled product – Our main USP was to reuse waste in such a way that it did not look like the product was a result of the upcycle process. Transforming this waste to make it not look like waste is not exactly easy! The recycling phenomenon in the minds of people is limited to products made of tetra packs, tyres, poly bags and paper. It was both challenging and interesting to change this mindset of people and explain to them how we can upcycle with simple day to day materials even at home

• Bringing about the awareness of the NEED to be environmentally conscious


We are optimists by having set up a business on a conviction that our economy is gradually becoming sustainable. Despite the challenges, we are steering ourselves towards a green economy facing while overcoming stiff resistance in the pursuit of a greener planet.