In my opinion, the average Indian doesn’t necessarily care much about the environmental impact of things. That could be due to the lack of awareness, ignorance, or just simply no time as half the working population is overburdened and exhausted due to stressful activities like traffic jams.
I saw about 3 companies in front of my eyes shut shop which made apparels out of textile waste. Some of them made items that had a lot of skill and artisanship involved. My only question is how can we promote such brands to the masses, and not just the very well-read urban elites. Unless the masses participate in these endeavors we will never have a big enough market for any successful textile waste business. I spoke to some textile shops in Bengaluru, who burn their excess ‘chindi’ waste, as the inventory holding costs are a bigger obstacle than the value created by repurposing it to items like bags, scrunchies, etc. They are happy to donate the cloth for better purposes, as long as they dont bear the brunt of logistics.
Example random ideas: Would you all be open to having your startups/brands/companies make bags from textile waste maybe with an embroidered logo or brand name? Every city has some form of textile waste, that’s burnt or dumped. Is there any way we can form major collectives across the country of repurposing these wastes to products? I am just throwing random ideas here to figure out, how can we have a more impactful way to repurpose fabrics. I see fabric bags as a good way, as they can replace polythene bags, and plus you can reuse bags made from textile waste, they can also be an added source of income for numerous collectives that work with women from marginalized communities to find employment.
Personally, the textile industry of Surat has so much deadstock, that needs to find its way back into society somehow. I wonder if an online portal with factory deadstock clothes would work out. For now, the deadstock is thrown away, if the trader isn’t able to find a buyer for it in a month or 2.