Scrapshala: Giving life to waste

By 2030, the global middle class or the consumer class is expected to reach 4.8 billion, as per the European Commission. With increasing consumerism, the world is exhausting its resources and creating cumbersome amounts of waste. The only way to deal with this challenge is to recycle and make a resource out of waste. Started in 2016, Scrapshala bases its business model on giving a new life to waste and used materials. The brand has got recognition after it featured in Shark Tank, an entrepreneurship-based reality show. Shivi Sharma, Editorial Assistant, connected with Shikha Shah, Founder of Scrapshala, to understand the growing industry of upcycling which could play a crucial role in making our cities smart and sustainable.
Excerpts from the interview….

At Scrapshala, how do you incorporate sustainability in your brand promise?

All the products made at Scrapshala are designed from its conception to its end of cycle to ensure that they don’t create new trash. That way we maintain zero waste cycle. Our products, from the creation to trashing, don’t create new waste. Moreover, whatever resources we procure in the form of raw materials are combined with fresh material to form a product, which are also sustainable, for example, while making tyre furniture, we might add stand on the tyre or a wooden leg to the tyre. So, we combine materials together in a way that makes the final product sustainable. Our products are made of upcycled materials, from mixture of old and new materials, while sometimes we procure completely sustainable materials which are not upcycled. For example, if we are making Holi colors (we are doing that right now), we do not use waste materials but we find sustainable ways of doing it, like they are made from vegetables and flower stains using natural pulse powder as color base, so that when they are washed off and reach the rivers, streams or soil, they won’t cause any sort of pollution. Lastly, all our products are handcrafted, and the more orders we get, the more artisans we can recruit, so we are trying to maintain a sustainable approach here as well.

How do you procure these raw materials? Are the municipal corporations involved in the process?

We are a small-scale company right now, and as we all know that almost every place has heaps of garbage gathered here and there, and people are more than happy to get rid of it, so we procure trash/raw material from few industries, domestic users and at times we take it from municipal corporations and local “kabadiwala” as well, as per our requirement.

Can we as consumers also send over our scrap so they can be used as raw materials?

Yes, people do that. At times they donate it, and if they wish to sell it to us, that is also possible.

Let’s talk a little bit about Varanasi because it is often said that Varanasi is a “City of Art”. Apart from involving the artisans and process of product manufacturing, how else do you incorporate the rich history of Varanasi into your products?

We are currently based in Varanasi and because a lot of tourists and local people shop from our retail stores, the manufacturing of majority of our products is inclined towards Varanasi. So, we produce a range of products inspired from the illustrations of Varanasi and are made by the local artisans. The artisans are also very comfortable in creating a real image of Varanasi in our products.
Usually while travelling, whatever souvenir tourists buy from the market, be it plastic keychains, plastic calendars, or anything else, people will eventually throw it. Because of this, we have introduced a full sustainable range of souvenirs with illustrations of Varanasi on it. So that’s how we take the advantage of the city we are based in. And as it is one of the oldest cities of the world, obviously the culture rubs off on the people. And for the kind of aesthetics we maintain, a lot of credit goes to Varanasi.

Generally speaking, Upcycling is a very expensive process, and building a business model around it could not have been easy. So, do you have any tips for young entrepreneurs who want to venture into this industry?

You are right about the difficulty involved in upcycling waste products, and it is still a tough process for us. Hopefully, someday we will have a policy for standardizing this entire upcycling industry, because there is no certification or standardization from the government. So right now, we are establishing standards, and therefore I believe that people who will come after a few years will find it much easier because a brand like Scrapshala would already have standardized various things. There is also a lot of uncertainty involved in upcycling which always keeps you hanging. For example, if you are buying fifty tyres for making furniture for a café, all those fifty tyres might be different. Our raw materials are almost always uncertain in their look. This whole thing is very unique and almost everything is a challenge, till somebody standardizes it. We are waiting for Scrapshala to reach that level and standardize upcycling.

In terms of enhancing the Scrapshala’s sustainability, what business avenues do you plan to incorporate to help it grow in the next five or ten years?

We are already reaching out to investors, who can invest and mentor us to make Scrapshala’s manufacturing a standardized process and scale up our business. We plan to start with production workshops in three to four regions of India, where people can come and learn. We also have a servicing wing where people can get their junk materials or unused old stuff lying in their storerooms and we upcycle them to make interesting, usable things. So basically, we are giving a second life to a redundant product, but we can only do this when we have enough production.
We are also looking towards expanding our retail stores to create a brand experience because when you bring such uncommon products into the market, you have to communicate with people and make them aware of its benefits, so that they become comfortable in buying an upcycled or sustainable product as they are with any other commercial product. For the next few years, we are planning to scale up, become standardised, make production more affordable and make our products accessible to the maximum number of people in India.

Scrapshala has been in the industry of upcycling and sustainability for a considerable amount of time. Have you witnessed a shift in consumer patterns with people becoming more inclined towards purpose driven brands?

Yes, definitely. In fact, we could continue our journey from 2016, because people supported us in various ways. And if you make a good product, it will definitely sell. Indians are more inclined towards brands with a purpose and Scrapshala is somehow reaching there. With more consciousness and visibility of climate change and health hazards, like the COVID-19 which we fought and endured for two years helped Scrapshala and upcycled products to become more acceptable.

My last question is, what inspired you to get into the industry of upcycling?

My mother had been doing this since I was a child, and it was very normal for me to see products getting upcycled either for home décor or school projects. So, upcycling was nothing new to me, and when I was pursuing my post-graduation in a foreign country, my mother was alone at home. I suggested to her to start this, so that she can build something for herself. And when I returned to Varanasi in 2016, I realized that she has a lot of limitations as she is a mother as well as a housewife. Therefore, I joined her venture to help her and we were able to build a company like ScrapShala. My mother was my inspiration.

Thank You Shikha for connecting with us and sharing your journey from the “scrap”.