One on One | Shikha Shah, Founder of Scrapshala
Shikha Shah, Founder of Scrapshala
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…. Illustrated by: Arjun Singh, Digital Marketing Associate
Scrapshala: Giving life to waste 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
40 March 2022 | www.urbanupdate.in
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
