An upcycling enterprise with an all-women workforce thinks out of the ‘bag’

With her enterprise Upcyclie, Namrutha achieves two goals with one stroke -- preventing fabric scraps from settling down in landfills and ensuring underprivileged women earn not just a livelihood but also respect. The upcycling organisation’s unique features include an all-women workforce

On UpCyclie’s website, one encounters patches of fabric coming together in bewildering patterns the way smithers of coloured glass do in a Kaleidoscope. These patterns have names and an assigned value in the market: to mention a few, backpacks, kids’ bags, memory bags with names, patchwork waist bags and denim belt bags. If one tried tracing those patches of fabric to their sources, the explorer would end up in dozens of tailoring shops in Chennai. 

For Namrutha, the founder of Upcyclie, the journey to the tailoring shops began with a simple question: what happens to all the leftover fabric?

“Chennai alone generates 251 tonnes of textile waste every single day,” says Namrutha, whose Upcyclie describes itself as “earth-friendly travel bags from fabric waste, by women”. Two hundred and fifty-one tonnes is a bit on the heavier side: it would take the collective weight of 46 African elephants to tip the scales against it. 

The answer to the above question turned out to be a call to action. The voices were different, but the answer was drearily uniform. “Fabric scraps had no resale value, so they were either discarded or burned; we do not have the means or the money to process them” -- that was well over 100 tailors speaking to Namrutha, as she crissed-crossed Chennai in her quest.

It is an environmental crisis that is neatly papered (well, clothed) over. Namrutha wanted to talk about it: she wanted her actions to do the talking. Tailoring shops began to exert a magnetic pull over her: during lunch breaks, weekend and after-office hours, she would invite herself to these shops, in Kamarajapuram, Rajakilpakkam, Sembakkam, Nanganallur, Adyar, Besant Nagar, T. Nagar, Adambakkam and Tillai Ganga Nagar (that list is far from exhaustive) and return home with wads of fabric waste.

The tipping point arriving sooner than expected, she turned her back on a carefully grown career as a growth marketer, to become a “tailor” with a difference. She would stitch meaning into what the regular tailors discarded as meaningless. 

“I quit my job in December 2021 and Upcyclie is my full-time job — my bread, butter, idly, dosai, everything!” laughs Namrutha.