Live it the eco-friendly way

While we want to live a lifestyle that leaves lesser carbon footprint, getting the right products is the challenge. 'Eco-Friendly Store' has the right kind of solution for it.

The brain child of Pankaj Sancheti, the store was opened for people to adapt ecofriendly product for daily use. The store is run by seven women home makers who started thinking about ways to help people stop using plastic. Namrata Baldwa shares the inspiration and work that went into working together for a common idea.

Tell us about how you got involved in the project?

I am a home maker; I and the rest of my friends, we have been wanting to do something bigger for our environment, and so Pankaj came up with this concept of a zero waste store. We thought this will make our effort to be nature-friendly by trying to avoid plastic at home, bigger.

What can you find in the store?

We stock everything right from groceries to beauty products in glass jars. It is not necessary for people to buy the huge jars, but we give them the option of taking groceries in their own jars or in paper bags that we provide.

Same goes for liquids, they can get their own container of we will fill them in glass jars for them. Even the beauty products are packed in glass containers.

We also have yoga mats and other such items. We sell homemade snacks, which are made by our family members and so we know what kind of ingredients go into the preparation. There are nearly 300 products now and we started with 150 products.

The main concern here is to reduce the use of single use plastic, a plastic that can be reused is understandable. So once you enter the store we want the customers to feel that we will not use single use plastic.

How do you coordinate for work?

We connect with each other on Whatsapp and we conduct a weekly meeting where every one of us meet. We have also divided our work.

How is the response form customers?

In the beginning we got customers who were inclined to this lifestyle; people are getting to know about this store and are slowly adapting to eco-friendly lifestyle. We will soon be launching the store officially.

What are the main hurdles in maintaining such a store?

When we started people would just come to the store, pick up things and leave. Nobody spent time to talk and know about the concept. It is easy to maintain stuff that is already packed, but we have to pack everything after the purchase and it was important for us to explain the delay to people, which was a task.

Every 10 days all the stuff is cleaned. But, we all joined for this concept as we wanted to do something for the society. So, there is no way of stepping back, we all enjoy our work as we divided it equally.

How do you want to grow as a company?

Right now we have one store; we want to come up with more stores like this. We will start home delivery soon. We are also going to start with the buyers and makers club where we will be getting homemade products and people can order them in bulk and we will supply them at a very good price.

In this way both parties are benefited. People who can supply anything handmade can join the makers club.