Late last month, as industry experts presented their offerings at Bharat Tex — one of the world’s largest textile events — two organisations from Bengaluru marked their presence with a rather unique offering: felt apparel, and accessories. The project is a collaboration between Hasiru Batte (an initiative by Bengaluru-based Hasiru Dala Trust) and The Good Felt. The latter is a project by Netherlands-based Enviu, an organisation that helps build new companies (such as Bengaluru’s Khaloom) across the clothing production chain that turn waste into value.
Ina Bahuguna, programme manager for Recycling, Livelihood and Green Jobs at Hasiru Dala, a social impact organisation that works with waste pickers, explains how they sent 250 kgs of white old clothes (from the city’s JP Nagar and Domlur facilities) to the Netherlands in August 2022, to be converted into felt material. “This was a pilot to test if Indian post-consumer textile waste is good enough to be made into felt material. The pilot was successful, and Enviu started looking for partners in India who could make felt and the search ended in Panipat,” says Ina, adding that Hasiru Batte’s role is to collect textile waste from households and sort it according to TGF’s requirements (all whites, for instance) and send it to their partner recycling facility at Panipat to be made into felt material.
