When Yusuf Ali says that he will create a lovely flower for you, you despair because all you see before you are things that people have thrown away – plastic bottles, varying lengths of electric wires, aluminium cans, metallic bits and pieces, in fact everything you would expect in a scrap market. Not really surprising because New Seemapuri Colony in east Delhi is indeed a hub of the waste business in the capital. But surrounded by this trash, you watch mesmerised as Ali, 26, takes a plastic bottle, lops off its top and then deftly fashions sepals out of the rest. He glues another similarly cut bottle to form the petals and then spray paints them in fluorescent colours before crowning his effort with a bulbous flower head that he adorns with bindis. And there, right before your eyes, you have got the promised flower.
The five people seated in the room chuckle at your incredulity .They are members of the Kabad Se Jugad micro collective. The group comprises mostly women, with Ali as the manager. In the three years since they came together to form the scrap start-up, their focus has changed from selling junk by the kilo to wresting waste material into decoratives and toys that fetch handsome prices in a world enamoured of the idea of recycling.
“A New York-based artist who goes by the single name of Ronaldo visited our colony in 2012,” narrates Ali when you ask him how Kabad Se Jugad came about. “He gave us the idea of using scrap to make fancy items, to utilize waste so that it does not pollute the environment.” Today, the group sells its flowers, toys, tea light holders and junk jewellery not only in India, but also abroad, where the plastic flowers have even been used by eco-conscious women as bridal bouquets.
Of course, it wasn’t easy to desert their scrap business and take to entrepreneurship for the collective members, all of whom come from economically weak families.
“But when you don’t know how to swim, you just jump into the river. Then in an effort to save yourself from drowning, you end up learning how to swim,” says Ali rather philosophically. Initially, the group made toys. Even today, Aasma, a young member, will adroitly twist a piece of wire this way and that and produce a framework that she fills in with strips of plastic to leave you holding an elephant. However, toys did not find many customers.”Now we mostly sell flowers,” says Aasma.
Ali says that Kabad Se Jugad gets orders from the US, France, Italy and other European countries. “While the foreign business is handled by Ronaldo, in India we put up stalls at fairs and exhibitions,” he says. The group is regularly present, for instance, at the capital’s popular crafts high spot, Dilli Haat.
Sourcing their needs from the scrap stalls all around them, the recycle artists do get good returns for their labour. For instance, making a flower costs around Rs 65, but it sells for Rs 400-500 in India and upwards of Rs 1,500 abroad. But they are not startup millionaires just yet because regular orders are hard to come by. “We sell most of our flowers between September and February, a period in which most festivals fall. There is little business the rest of the year,” says Ali. Aasma chimes in with, “We also utilize our warehouse for five months, but pay an en tire year’s rent for it. And although we have our own website (kabadsejugad.org), business is not very hot.”
The team also conducts workshops at schools run by foreign embassies on how to recycle discarded stuff creatively. “People from abroad find our work with e-waste interesting, but our own countrymen are not interested. The response in three years hasn’t been enthusiastic,” rues Ali. However, he and his compatriots hold on to the hope that their small contribution to save the environment will one day meet with commercial success.