See your flag grow

The fervour of Independence Day is renting the air and people are all geared up to celebrate the 72nd Independence Day. The markets are flooded with flags that are made with plastic and after the eclectic celebrations these flags, which are adorned on clothes, vehicles, etc as a mark of respect to the country are just strewn here and there causing a great hazard to the environment. To counter this problem, 24-year-old Krithika Saxena from Delhi has come up with environment-friendly flags.

A corporate employee by profession and an engineer by qualification Krithika has embedded seeds in flags, which are made with a recycled seed paper. After the celebrations, one can plant to see them grow rather than throwing them.
Excerpts:

What is the idea behind making flags out of seed paper?
I am a very environment-friendly person, of late I was very caught up with things that are made of plastic and are thrown off after using it for once. At one event I saw wristbands made of plastic and chemical ink and they were very fancy.

At that moment I should do something to protect the environment. When I started doing research about environment-friendly concepts, I stumbled upon information about old Japanese tradition, where along with a newspaper people used to get seed samplings so that they sow the seed. This concept caught my mind and then I decided to do something with seed paper and then thought of making flags out of these seed papers as Independence Day was coming.

I got this idea in the month of July and I had very little time. I had to take the help of a friend of mine, who was involved in such activities. He was a great help and fast forwarded the process for me.

How is the seed paper different from a regular paper?
Seed paper is made using tomato and chilli seeds. The seeds are embedded in the paper. The normal paper is made by cutting trees but, my paper base is made up of recycled cotton fibre.

What is the process of making the seed paper?
On can acquire recycled cotton fibre from cotton industries. The residual fibre which remains after making a fabric is used to make the seed paper. The whole process is hand-made. We flatten the fibre and then see that everything we use in the paper is organic, at least 80 per cent of it if not all. We make sure that no chemicals are added so that it can be used later without causing any harm.

Apart from flags, are you planning to make anything else with the seed paper?
Right now, I am not doing anything else, but now after seeing the response, I would like to come up with something this Diwali as there is a lot of wastage that is done during the festival.

What kind of obstacles did you face?
Initially, there were a few challenges. I did not know how to market the product and I started approaching schools, where I did not get a positive response.

Eventually, through social media, the concept took off. The word of mouth spread quickly through WhatsApp and Facebook, which helped me in getting orders for my product.

What are your future plans?
My aim is to bring more products like this and stop the use of plastic.

We have taken a lot of things for granted especially the environment. So, I just want to urge people to stop the use of plastic and protect our environment.