Sustainable Enterprise: A step towards an eco-friendly lifestyle
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer” — Harriet Tubman
We at Amal Academy are actively encouraged to showcase innovative entrepreneurial skills to create an impact on social issues we ponder over often. Thus, an opportunity was given to solve a problem and our circle decided to work for the sustainability of the environment.
Introducing our future venture ‘Stichin’ Scrap’, a platform where ‘meter kapra’ wastage gets a legal identification of a useful item. It’s a concept where we would work on recycling the waste fabrics from industries that serve as pollutants and litter the land. A revolutionary step would be utilizing those fabric remnants and mold it into eco-friendly accessories to hook customer’s attention. The cabbages turned phone cases, customized masks or even fabric crunches innovatively brings forth reprocessed green composites that are not only eye-catching but also easy to carry with no cyclic maintenance at all.
Problem Statement:
Unfortunately, the Fast Fashion habit and demand are aggressively growing, while it does, the amount of fabric waste continues to mount too. Industries are not paying attention in managing their waste of over 25 million tons of fabric annually which not just impacts landfill but it’s an issue in various perspectives. Through waste recycling services we can reduce the waste pollution and industries would be able to manage their waste efficiently and effectively.
The use case of recycling the waste to create a new consumer product is still very low. Textile waste has the potential to cater for various consumer products. Therefore, there is an opportunity in the market to exploit this space and introduce a product line recycled from waste or leftover fabric that the customer uses directly. The notion behind this initiative is not to just create economic value, instead, to provide the consumer with cheaper, yet friendlier alternatives.
Targeted audience:
When we started our business planning, we initially thought to only target the housewives but with gradual deep research we were able to revise our product portfolio and target market.
Now, we have planned to launch with only two categories in product portfolio i.e. COVID-19 necessity and Her Accessories. Hence, for both the categories we have different niche to target and that is as follows:
- COVID-19 necessity -> Both genders (Professional and Students)
- Her Accessories -> Female Gen Z
Task Division:
According to our business layout there are some major operations that need to be divided in small teams to work effectively. Since we are 7 members in a group, we followed the approach of task division.
- People Management & Procurement: Ms. Rabiya Sohail and Mr. M. Fahim
- Marketing and Sales: Mr. Syed Ameem and Mr. M. Sameer
- Manufacturing: Ms. Aniqa Qasim and Ms. Hira Jawaid
- Inventory Management: Ms. Bakhtawar
- Product: All team Members
These were the tasks for this week and due to our team effort we are now at a stage where we have found designers that would help us in making our product and also shopkeepers that would help us in selling our products. Also, we were able to collect a little bit of waste from the industry for the start and implementation of our mega project.
Challenges Faced:
The initial challenge that we faced was time and people management remotely. It’s not an easy thing to be a full time employee/ student and launch a business at the same time. Since it’s our dream to make this world a better place to live. For that we have decided to push ourselves a little harder and schedule meetings daily for min. 15 mins to half an hour and register our progress to each other and if any issue is being faced then we would be able to discuss and address before it becomes a risk.
After contacting two textile mills, we realized that there was a convincing factor missing while communicating with them and that was because we were unsure about the different type of wastes available then we planned to connect one of Rabiya’s friend’s sister i.e. Farhat Inayat who has extensive experience in textile mills and through farhat we received the 2 more contact details for more deep knowledge on type of waste. Thanks to Mr. Arsalan from Alkaram who really helped us to identify and understand the matter.
Moreover, even with the adequate knowledge it’s still challenging to convince the industries to scrap their waste to us because they have already contracted with bug dealers who collect the waste in bulk and use it for either burning purpose or any other purpose. Seamlessly, this challenge is not just a challenge but a risk without any strong links in industry. After putting weeks of effort we were finally able to connect to a upper level contacts which helped us to get the waste.
Since we have planned to target another company, we have planned to personally visit a company located in the Korangi area and try to convince them to sell us the waste and we will feature them on our instagram page with more other services.
Finding quality manufacturers with reasonable rates is also pretty challenging which actually led us to amend our product portfolio. Now, we are planning to change the initial launching product and place some home made DIY type items so that it would be easier for us to approach the nearby available female designer or tailors.
Reflections:
As a circle, we think that the entire project itself is challenging because the idea is different and it demands a lot of effort but we all personally enjoyed it because we silently learnt a lot for instance; we learnt to handle the conflict between members without being judgmental etc.
We all were consistent throughout the project for discussions and research because that makes it easier for us to plan our next action plan. As a team we believe in accepting challenges and once accepted there is no way back.
Our inspiration is what Quaid said once, "I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right”
Sometimes we feel like we have selected a difficult idea but the aforementioned quote inspires and gives strength to fight all odds and make it possible.