As the week of the 77th year of Independence is upon us, one can see how the city is dressed in the tricolour. From vendors selling tiny flags on cars to shops donning giant ones on their windows – the country is feeling proud. But historically, we have learned to celebrate more wisely, especially with regards to the safety of the environment. Plastic flags and rubber balloons are looked down upon. Thankfully, the city has enough people working for the green cause.
Environment and sustainability changemaker Odette Katrak has been working tirelessly to impact how people do everyday things. “Not enough is happening. A week before I-Day, you can see balloons cut and plastic flags being available on the streets, though I must say it has reduced in number. We, as part of our organisation Beautiful Bharat, have been campaigning about the risks of using balloons.
There are alternative ways of celebrating an occasion mainly using flowers, papers and cloths. Flowers are the best when used for colours. The other would be reusable paper. For cloth, tailors across the country have scraps that they eventually dump somewhere. If you ask one for theirs, they will happily give it to you. You can use different colours depending on the festival,” shares Katrak.
When it comes to the artistic side, sustainable product designer Maria Joseph has created an art piece called the Indian monobloc chair, which is covered in mycomaterial (mushrooms, in this case) as a symbol ‘for the ubiquitous Indian plastic chair vs the quiet eco revolution in the country’. Joseph elaborates, “I have been working with mycomaterials for a year now and this year in India a growing material workshop happened for the first time.
For example, if you take the roots of the mushroom, it will take the shape of the raw material you put it in. I believe the monobloc chair is a symbol of democratic design: it can live without context. I wanted to take this chair and use it as a symbol for the future. I want to introduce the use of mycomaterials growing from the ground and taking over plastic, while alive and decomposing. India is in a state of transition and I wanted to depict that.”
Roshan Ray, founder of Seed Paper India, is making Indian flags made out of seaweed as a healthy alternative. “We have been working on this for the past four months. First, we got seaweed. Then we converted them into paper, so we used 60 per cent of seaweed and 40 per cent of carbon waste materials, made that into a pulp and eventually handmade paper, which we put to dry over five to seven days. Then we cut it into different shapes and converted them into flags. Even these seaweed flags have two kinds, ones with seaweed in them and the ones without,” says Ray.