Hello listeners, I'm kinshuk.
Hi, I'm Tanya.
Welcome to Sustainably Yours, a podcast demystifying sustainability, one topic at a time. If you're ever wondering how to get knowledge about climate change, its impact on society, and how we can mitigate it, this is your place to be.
We get social entrepreneurs, ecosystem enablers and guests from many works of lives to enable a collaborative development of climate centric knowledge. Today, let's see what we have in store for us. Tanya, tell us what we are going to talk about today.
Let's talk about circularity in retail kinshuk, particularly in the food and grocery sector. Literally the roti in the roti kapra makan. So how many times have you?
Wanted to buy organic pulses that do not come in plastic packaging or, you know, get your cleaners and containers that dont need to be thrown away once youve emptied them out. If you think about it, buying our kitchen staples loose or in returnable packaging has always been part of our DNA. Think about the glass cola bottles or the oil tins.
These practices were lost in the name of convenience and today globally, $10 billion is wasted in single use packaging material every year.
Wow, that's a very big number.
Yeah, and circular economy, we realize now, is the most efficient way to consume. And unlike the linear model, which generates massive plastic and product waste, a circular economy tries to reduce, reuse or recycle its ingredients.
Now that's that's a very big point, Tanya, because retailing.
Is a massive industry and even in India almost 7% of the GDP comes from food and grocery retailing. So imagine if we could switch magically from linear to circular economy in retail. It would be such a big change in our way of living. Imagine how many lesser landfills we will have.
I had done a research after we spoke about this topic on zero based stores globally and I expected to find a lot, but there are not so many stores, A small number pops up, some in US, some in Europe, one or two in UK. But the good news is that it is growing at a good rate and there are many social entrepreneurs who are trying to establish this business in their towns.
And there are many enablers who are helping them set up these businesses. So I think that it's a good trend and let's hope that every city has at least one zero waste solution.
One entrepreneur that I have come across in Bangalore is Gayathri Joshi. Her online store Eco Sansar enables consumers to buy almost all their daily kitchen and household needs and completely zero waste packaging. And she is going to be our guest of the day.
Determined to bring back the low waist lifestyle, Gayatri Joshi quit her successful career in IT to start Eko Sansar. Eko Sansar is a Bangalore based circular economy retail ecommerce store that aims to minimize waste. Her mission is to influence people to start a 0 waste life and she herself is a leading example of it. So let's go and meet her.
Hey, Gayatri, thank you so much for joining today. I know you have such a busy weekend servicing orders. So it's it's a pleasure to have you and thank you so much for taking time out.
Thank you so much. My pleasure to be here with you both.
So we'll start with all the questions that we always wanted to know about circular economy and zero waste living and we will understand how you are helping the citizens of Bangalore live a sustainable life, right?
Sure, shoot, Gayathri tell.
Us How?
Did you start Eco Sansar? What is what was that one life changing moment for you that prompted you to take this journey up? So it's a long time ago. Actually, it's about 17 years ago when I was, I was brought up in Mumbai, settled in Mumbai and there was a flood in July 2005 in Mumbai.
I was pretty much stranded on the road, you know, standing in the rising waters and all of that. We had to stand by until the water receded, you know, the ocean water that had come into the city. And when the water did recede in the morning, you could not see an inch of the road because it was completely filled with plastic. And the waste that we had dumped into the ocean at that time, and this is 17 years ago.
So I can't imagine the magnitude of problem today, but that image and that experience kind of stayed with me for a really long time, and I still feel very fresh from that experience. You know, it's it's not faded away at all, the complete aghastness of the situation. And of course I didn't do anything immediately at that time. The only thing I could do was I stopped using plastic bags myself.
In terms of shopping and you know, your groceries or your carry bag, you know, vegetables. And I stuck to using my cloth bag and that's the Max that you could do at that time. And then life happened, Got married, moved to Bangalore, had kids. And in the middle of all of this, I am an engineer by education and networking professional. So I took up a networking job. So, you know, just just running the life.
Like all your peers, but somewhere it always stayed. And I had taken a break when I had kids and when I wanted to join back to having a career and having a life of, you know, a section of my life for my own, that's when I got a chance to actually sit and evaluate what I really want to do. My husband was. Sachin was extremely supportive. He was also part of.
This image that I had carried, he was not part of the experience, but it was something he knew that I'm carrying this in my head and heart for a long time. And he said, look, why don't you try and do something about it. This is the chance anyways, since you're going to get back to work. And I definitely, you know, was a bit far more sensitive after having kids because then you're worried about the kind of world you're going to leave behind for them. And that's how Eko Sanzar started, you know, so.
I started looking for options for myself to live sustainably and couldn't.