Sustainability is a buzzword in 2021. But how do you reconcile it with the celebration of much loved and popular festive occasions? This is where the impactful reach of seed embedded paper paves the way for expanding the scope of sustainability among corporates.
What is seed embedded paper?
To understand the concept better, here is what this means: Plantable Seed Paper is paper made from Pre consumed cotton waste embedded with seeds. The paper as being made from cotton is 100% biodegradable. Simply put, when one sows the paper after it has been used and water it daily, the waste cotton starts decomposing into the soil and the seeds start germinating.
Seed embedded paper: Benefits
A cooler way to explain this is that you can grow plants from seed embedded paper!
Not only has a small Indian company rolled this out, but they also created an innovative festival product series with Seed Rakhis that can be planted and grown into a plant and for Holi, they launched A Holi ka Dabba that contains everything sustainable and herbal.
This is just a tip of the sustainability ‘iceberg’ so to speak.
Entrepreneurial journey towards Sustainability
The early beginnings of a customized greeting card corporation quickly went on reinventing itself on realising how rather of becoming a answer to a dilemma, it was becoming a aspect of a higher dilemma.
So, what precisely was the dilemma?
“We were using paper whose source was wood pulp which is made by cutting really old and huge trees. On top of that, we were creating a good volume of paper wastage every month. These two things made us realize and rethink what we were doing and at that moment we shifted completely to using paper made from waste cotton and gradually moved into making Plantable Seed Paper,” mentioned Divyanshu Asopa, founder of 21 Fools, which had introduced this paper to the Indian market place in 2014 for the initially time.
Inspired by Gandhian ideals of strengthening nearby commitment in sustainability efforts, the corporation also began educating corporates about creating the substantially necessary sustainability switch.
Convincing Corporates to Switch to Seed Paper
But the hurdles have been lots as Divyanshu Asopa tells FE Online, “It took us a few months to establish the authenticity of the paper. Many people didn’t believe in a paper growing into a plant. Our target market from metro cities usually adopt plants and don’t know how to grow a seed. So it became a challenge to educate them about the ways a seed has to be grown. Our vision is to establish the use of Seed Paper as a regular alternative to wood pulp paper and make people more aware of the purchasing choices they are making.”
A rational method was to concentrate majorly on working with corporates who are keen to make a sustainable switch in their communication applying seed paper.
Corporates that utilized Seed Paper
“Till now we have worked with over 400+ companies, From Google to BMW, Reliance to Maruti, Flipkart to Pepperfry, we have worked with wonderful organizations who have embraced the idea of using seed paper,” Divyanshu Asopa adds.
Seed Paper usage: What else is next?
From this year, the corporation has began creating goods for B2C prospects who want to use seed paper for their individual use & promoting it by means of their eCommerce platform. The corporation is also building a stationary solution line that will contain diverse sizes of sheets for direct use, blank and printed greeting cards, envelopes, diaries, bookmarks, bags, packaging paper, coasters, Wedding Cards, Wedding favors, and so on.
The largest challenge that the corporation has faced whilst working with corporates is to establish seed paper as a sustainable/ frequent replacement for paper and not a one-time marketing and advertising activity. Once a brand has utilized seed paper to publicize their commitment towards sustainability, they do not use it once again as a replacement for wood pulp paper.
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a crucial concentrate location for buyers and young Indians who are mindful about the identical. How do you see the development path scaling up ahead and what do you take into account to be the challenges ahead?
We have been working with the craftspersons neighborhood to develop goods for the final 5 yrs and applying only non-toxic and sustainable supplies to do so. The thought was by no means to do so as it was going to be ‘in fashion’ but since we firmly think in the Gandhian thought of sustainability. Recalliing Mahatma Gandhi’s sensible words, “There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.”
Gladly for us, the young Indians are becoming conscious of what they use, consume, put on – How the goods are produced, how substantially water it requires, the use of chemical compounds, and also who tends to make it, whether or not they are paid relatively or not. That’s why we are shifting our concentrate on building goods for the youth.
In the final year, we have launched a series of goods focusing upon the Indian Festivals. For Rakhi, we designed Seed Rakhis that can be planted and grown into a plant, For Diwali, we launched ‘Beej Patakha’ – Firecrackers look-alike which was produced from waste paper and embedded with seeds. For Holi, we have launched ‘Phoolchand’, which is a Holi ka Dabba that includes every little thing sustainable and herbal. The audience for all these goods is the youth who are breaking away from the shackles of the previous and redefining the festival celebrations in a more meaningful way.
For the next couple of months, we are preparing to make our Festival based goods attain out to a wider audience and for that, we have began establishing a distribution channel across India. The challenge even so is the time it requires to handcraft these goods manually.
Given that the travel and hospitality segments in India are increasingly tapping into sustainability initiatives, how do you see this fitting nicely with these two segments?
The travel and hospitality sector makes use of a lot of goods that are meant for ‘One-time use only. Packaging of such goods is one of the segments we want to concentrate on. For instance – Envelopes holding Toothbrushes, Pastes, Combs, and many such area accessories can be produced from seed and handmade paper.