FEATURE

Choose sustainability with style. Choose conscious shopping.

In recent times, with more and more global brands leaning towards sustainable products, we see a steep increase in small-scale businesses that are emerging with a motif of creating conscious products and trying to achieve sustainability not just environmentally but also economically and socially. This strive is not just to achieve eco-friendly, high-quality products without compromising on style but also to embrace lowimpact production, moderate consumption of natural materials, and increase the longevity of the product. We’ve curated for you, a list of sustainable and conscious startups from Hyderabad that clearly break the myth of ‘sustainability over style’ and drive us on the path of ‘sustainability with style’.

By Sindhura Repaka

Brown and Teal by Jaya

There is an undivulged charm about any vintage piece and furniture is no exception. While we love a trendy, easily available chic piece of furniture from a high-end brand, we cannot deny the elegance a handpicked sustainable piece of furniture adds to your space. As much as furniture is a functional fragment of any space, it is also a reflection of your personality and the story your space tells.

‘Brown and Teal’ was founded by Jaya Tulsi in an attempt to restore vintage furniture in 2021 June. Brown depicts the trees and Teal represents the vintage calms and contrast of brown, this brand’s aesthetics scream zen vibes.

‘Brown and Teal’ is not just any other antique store. Jaya, the founder of Brown and teal believes that furniture is breaking the bubble of fast fashion and breathing life back into old furniture. Jaya Tulsi is a photographer by profession and runs ‘Brown and Teal’ out of passion for restoring re-fixable furniture, spreading awareness on sustainable furniture investments, and choosing environment-friendly alternatives.

Accompanied by her fiancé, Manoj, and their craftsman, Subhash an artisan from Rajasthan, Jaya sources pure teakwood furniture, redesign them and brings to you a collection. Be it adding customized curation of the woodwork to your space like a work table or adding a statement vintage piece with a modern touch like a dining table, an almirah, or adding a special touch to mundane items like key holders, stools, ‘Brown and Teal’ cater to all these needs. In an era where terms like ‘teakwood finish’ are advertised to accentuate the mass-produced products at the cost of customers’ lack of awareness, budding companies like Brown and Teal are striving to change the perception and showcase the beauty and strength of original teakwood furniture. Their latest dining table embellished with morocco tiles is unquestionably an exemplar of that.

You can reach out to Brown and Teal on Instagram at @brownandteal

Bodhi by Swetha and Swathi

Unlike many fashion graduates who choose to carve their career path under the umbrella of an established brand or a designer, this twin sister pair chose to follow their calling and start a homegrown conscious clothing brand. Right after graduating from Hamstech College, Swetha and Swathi decided to dedicate their full time to their business and founded Bodhi in 2021. Bodhi takes its name from a Sanskrit word that means awakening and at Bodhi, this sister duo strives to awaken the masses from the fast fashion that is slowly turning all-consuming. This sister pair considers participating in a competition called Redress design awards, which is the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition a pivotal moment in their entrepreneurial journey. Bodhi aims at creating sustainable timeless pieces inspired by Indian culture. They use eco-friendly and certified fabrics which are made from handwoven Kala cotton, orange crepe, recycled cotton, bamboo fabric, and rose petal fabric. Recycled cotton is formed by passing the fabrics through machines to be shredded into yarn and then into a crude fiber. This drastically reduces the amount of water needed when compared to growing virgin cotton. Similarly rose fabric is made using waste petals and bamboo fabric by crushing the woody part of the plant and then, applying natural enzymes to break the bamboo cell walls. These fabrics are then printed in different patterns like kalamkari by expert artisans or block printed using natural vegetable dyes. Their Project Rescue gained a lot of traction from the audience in which Bodhi rescued excess material from factories from ending up in landfills and designed them into sustainable clothing options. This sister duo believes that we are not one in nature we are one with this nature. We are not something that is completely excluded from the growth, but an inclusive mutually growing ecosystem. It’s not you and me it is you with me.

You can reach out to Bodhi on Instagram at @bodhi.ss

Handvaerk by Shravya &Ranadheer Reddy

Founded in 2019 Apr, Handvaerk sells meaningful gifting options like hand castings, sustainable décor like upcycled bottles, pyrography nameplates, magnets, resin art accessories, and portrait bottles. Handvaerk stems from an amalgamation between the Danish word ‘vaerk’ which means work and the English word hand. Both the founders were architects, their exploration of materials led them to learn about casting materials and experiment with hand castings. Nothing encapsulates memories and time like a gold accent hand casting on a raw wood bark enclosed in a frame. Soon, this gifting option became a crowd favorite which led to the growth of the brand and the introduction of other products. Weddings being their major sale season for their crowd loved hand castings, Handvaerk took a toll during the past year. Staying composed, they used this time and opportunity to work on future products. Once the world resumed and the customers got to see, touch, and feel the quality of their products in the flea market scene, this brand quickly regained its prominence. Handvaerk sources used bottles from local vendors and upcycle them into home décor pieces, which can also be customized by portraits. Their pyrography nameplates are a subtle yet elegant touch to any space. Apart from these, Handvaerk also runs a sub-brand named ‘Nina clothing’ that creates adorable kid’s clothing pieces and accessories like bows, shoes, etc which require lesser material. All these pieces are made from the leftover materials from different boutiques in the city.

You can reach out to Handvaerk on Instagram at @hand_vaerk

| WELLNESS

Inheriting the Positive Attitude

-By Bidisha Barik

The awareness of therapeutic journaling was raised in the 1960s when Psychologist Dr Pogoff began offering workshops in “Intensive Journal Method” and published three books that promoted journal writing for personal growth. Later, when public school systems included journal writing in their English classes - these journals were academic - teachers noticed the simple assignments often revealed a lot about the student’s emotional life. Journals serve different purposes with its different types- for writers: it serves as collecting their thoughts, catalogue of their ideas either with unstructured writing or prompts and for non-writers, it serves as a practice of maintaining records of daily events, to-do-lists or gratitude journaling which focuses solely on the positives of your life - gratitude journaling is an effective way to boost your self-esteem and help in personal well-being. The consistency with journaling creates awareness of thoughts. It helps in engaging with their insights while putting them down in a writing format without any filter. It builds a way to self-discovery and reflects a hue of positive ideas that ease the battle

with the negative thoughts or act as a problem-solving technique. In this process, one will have a bunch of self-development records, which they can revisit later that will motivate and revive your trust in self-growth. The daily practice of journal writing involves dealing with stress management and strengthening and the growth of critical cognitive ability in an individual.

Bidisha Barik

Journal Artist & Writer

““I’ve experienced that confronting a blank page forces out the voices of inner-self and strengthens my intuitions. It also motivates me to work on the path of self-reliance on the diffi cult days - with the calming words I have once inked on the pages making it more volatile on the heart and mind. Also, revisiting the old journal spreads persuade new prompts for journaling. Journaling has been my calming escape from the messed up thoughts where I can slowly ink down the words and the unclear portrait of thoughts altogether draws an aesthetic image as a spread.”

“A journal is your completely unaltered voice”, said Lucy Ducas. And we’ve people sharing similar opinions about journaling.

Reshma Khatoon

Writer

“Growing up I was the sort of person who couldn’t let go of anything that seemed even a little bit pretty. Like patterned papers, passes, notes passed in secrecy between me and my BFFs, and they all had to stash somewhere safe. I like the idea of keeping a journal and putting in everything I love between the beige fawn papers, like doodles, my art, my drawings, my poems, a poem by other poets, song lyrics, playlists, plans, outfi t inspiration, random pictures of me and my friends, and then decorating it with cutesy stickers and glitter. It is a place where everything fi ts in aesthetically. It becomes my little world, without even trying, a little world full of things that inspire me and uplift me. It’s a really elegant space to put my tangled thoughts neatly. I like the idea of organizing most random, wistful, happy, depressing thoughts and whims in a pattern of shades and moods that I can show off to everyone. If not writing down poems, I’m writing goals and plans and that helps in productivity management, even if in just a small way. Plus, I love the sound of scissors cutting paper, and mixing colors to paint away boredom. Everyone has a creative and artistic side, although it does not always show on the outside, and my journal is a depiction of who I am.” “

Journaling is a way to explore the ideas as they unfold. Over the years, journaling has advanced with various additives to the process.

Homemaker

““There are a lot of thoughts that go on in our brain. Sometimes they get so entangled that writing them down makes it much less complicated. Journaling daily is a great way to recognize and work towards one’s emotions, insecurities and goals. Apart from that, writing down daily tasks helps to get organized and plan the day out eff ectively. With the recent boom in social media, people are accustomed to checking their phones, fi rst thing in the morning. This should be changed to journaling, if not in the morning, then at least once at night.

People who are overburdened with anxiety and stress fi nd journaling particularly benefi cial. Also recommended by psychologists, people suff ering from any kind of mental health issues fi nd it calming to have their thoughts written down.”

Saima Afreen

Senior journalist

“A journal, especially maintained by a wordsmith, carries unslept nights along with the insatiable hunger to explore more of the hidden parts of his/her psyche that don’t guarantee light or a door to exit. The words on the pages aren’t just symbols in ink but spells that hold the reader seharzada (enchanted). However, the arrangement of the words is written almost the same way what the author/poet feels in that moment as the lines are penned in silent hours, in that part of the night when a marigold twig may still be shivering from the storm it just witnessed -- one cannot always fi nd beautiful, “ positive, delightful writing in a notebook -- these words are written in states of fear, unnamed restlessness, anxiety almost otherwordly in nature that only a writer can feel. To read such pages are acts of going through the storms, and come back to one’s own world whose very defi nition changes after what you witness. At the same time, you never know if the same words can pull out the very darkness that you were running away from yet identifi ed yourself with.”

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