A man from Bihar has found a brilliant solution to floral waste management.
Meet Praveen Chauhan, a social entrepreneur & designer, who recycles these flowers through his social enterprise, MATR. The NIFT alumnus works with Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi temple and every day, along with his team, he collects floral waste to transform into natural dyes.
Praveen works with Kathy Williams who is from Australia and founder of ‘Because of Nature’, sustainable clothing label. Kathy works in Bodhgaya and Gaya along with Praveen. Apart from making natural dyes, they are also working on establishing sustainable employment for the ladies in the community. They have a joint project called Happy Hands Project.
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Kathy explained about the work they are doing, “I am a natural dyer, I have brought my skills to train the women in the high-quality natural dye. We have an incredible collaboration with Mahabodhi Temple where our ladies weekly collect the marigold that we process into the natural dye. Any waste from the collection is composted, so we are working on a zero waste production. And it’s also wonderful that anything that comes from Mahabodi temple has no negative impact on the environment. The marigold I put into the waterways, we are using them to do positive things within the community.”
There are around four pre-preparation stages from collecting the flowers to making dye. “Around 100 shades of yellow can be produced on Khadi from marigolds,” she added.
They also aim to promote the skills of local artisan communities. “30 ladies will begin with our project and hopefully, in the near future, we will be able to grow that number to 1500, who knows we just want to keep growing and creating sustainable income for the women,” said Kathy.
They are selling these high-quality Khadi fabrics to national and international markets.
