New Delhi, July 24, 2021: These days, we buy clothes in the click of a button and discard them just as quickly. Seems convenient enough, but the ease of this process makes us forget the dire impact this action has on the environment.
Annika Naramreddy, a 16-year old student at , decided to tackle this problem of textile waste, especially pre-consumer waste in her own way. Annika started an initiative named Pharz, Urdu for responsibility, indicating the tide of young people taking on the responsibility for the environment. This initiative has been able to uplift the environment, bringing awareness to tailors, and supporting women.
At Pharz, the community of young people have come together to upcycle textile waste from tailors into masks and bags. Through this initiative, 2875 meters of cloth was prevented from going to landfills and have been able to provide 9 tailors with employment during pandemic. Even better, of the 11000 masks and 250 bags sewn through the initiative, half of them have been donated to NGOs that support women and children such as Youth for Seva.
When asked what inspired her to start the initiative, she says “I remember going to the tailor, as I have many times before, but that day something stood out to me. There were piles and piles of pieces of fabric scattered across the floor, and I got to wondering, where is this all going? I asked the tailor who owned the shop about it, and he said it goes to garbage once enough of it is collected. I couldnt imagine the impact of that, and decided to do something about it!”
Although she has been able to push Pharz forward a great deal since this seed of an idea, Annika says she envisions Pharz working on a much larger scale and will push forward to achieve this vision. “I want to do even bigger things with Pharz, not only to be able to prevent more textile from ending up in landfills through our initiative but also work with larger organizations to improve the status of textile recycling units in South India, which is currently very dire.”
