- Vedobroto and his wife Chetana adopted a village in Karnataka and set up Karma Tips for manufacturing biodegradable paper
- Karma paper is an innovation, used as RYO cigarette filter containing plant seeds which sprout from the waste
- Karma Tips is carbon footprint reducing green revolutions as well as a rural empowerment initiative
In the marketing and advertising industry, a common phrase heard inside the office is “Think Out of the Box”. Spending years even in their highly successful advertising careers respectively, there was a time when Vedobroto Roy and his wife Chetana Prasad paused and played a different version of life altogether. Far away from the creative world of advertising, they found another world which was no less widening of thoughts, far from the hustle-bustle of the urban forest, they rather found a green civilisation amidst the peacefulness of greens.
The duo came up with the start Karma Tips, a small factory to make biodegradable paper that is used as RYO (roll your own) cigarette butt. Karma Filter Tips are specially designed RYO cigarette filters that are designed to change cigarette waste into something awesome that does not harm the environment as well as spreads greenery. The man behind the project as well as its founder, Vedabroto Roy gives us the idea behind his project and its significance in today’s world of green manufacturing innovations.
It was started in 2016 by Vedobroto and his wife Chetana who were erstwhile senior executive directors in advertising. They came down to a village in Karnataka in 2015, which was suffering from a 20 year-long drought which made the village into a wasteland. Vedobroto and his wife adopted the village and set up a small factory for manufacturing Karma paper and thus Karma Tips was founded.
From a Waste Land to Upcycling Revolution
Establishing Karma Tips changed the entire ecosystem of the village. From being poor villagers who couldn’t earn enough to pay for their meals they became employed in the factories as well as they learned to make handicrafts and paper as well.
It had a positive impact on their lives especially on the lives of the women of the village who were becoming self-reliant. An idea to reduce pollution, caused by plastic cigarette butts, turned into a dream of establishing a model village that could inspire several others to follow. Vedobroto says,” We were earning enough money in the advertising industry but we could not sleep at night. But now, we sleep well at night knowing that we are making a positive impact in the world around us.”
Eco-friendly multipurpose paper from Karma Tips
There are various categories of paper made by Karma Tips but the common traits that they all share are 100% biodegradability and free from all those harmful chemicals and pesticides used in normal paper. They follow all the global standards regarding green manufacturing. Vedobroto says,” Nothing in our factory is wasted, not even the water that we use to make paper which is reused by releasing it onto the fields.”
Their special process of making paper is the sandwiching method by sandwiching a banana sheath in between two cotton paper sheets. When using the paper as RYO filters, the minute the nicotine touches the seed, it dies. To compensate for this, Karma Tips protects the paper by using two coverings of cotton paper to ensure that the banana sheath in the middle does not die.
Plastic cigarette butts are a major pollutant today even eclipsing the threat of plastic bags to become the number one pollutant in the world. Each regular cigarette butt is non-biodegradable and remains in the environment for more than 200 years and also contains several harmful chemicals that can seriously harm the soil and environment at large.
Choking Challenges: Research, Finance & COVID19
It was an uphill task for Vedobroto and his team to develop the Karma paper. He compares it to “a fat man trying to push a piano uphill”. The biggest challenge that they faced was finance- they didn’t take out any loans for their project, they used their entire savings to fund this project. They were morally supported by KVIC board and they pushed on against all odds.
While exporting, they faced other challenges such as being compliant to various global norms which are necessary for exporting their paper to foreign markets. There was the challenge of finding applications for the paper and further refining it to suit various standards and keep their unique way of making the paper a step ahead of their peers.
The current COVID19 pandemic has cast a shadow over their manufacturing plans and for six months negligible work is being done at their factories due to the lockdown and COVID19 restrictions. To solve the financial stress of their workers, they are continuing to pay them a salary in spite of weak exports showing that business isn’t only about making profits.
Karma Tips: Valuable Asset to the Environment
To achieve the stage of completion that it now boasts, Vedobroto and his wife worked tirelessly on making the paper. They spent two whole years experimenting before they could identify the source that they needed to start making the paper. They made it such that they could make paper from the raw materials collected from the village itself. The banana trunks, which would otherwise be wasted, were used by them to turn it into Karma paper.
The Amaranth plant is a special plant which when planted in the soil absorbs all the chemicals and fertilizers and heavy metal present in the soil and leaves behind fertile and clear soil. It is 100% edible and can grow on the cigarette butts made by Karma Tips, making it a valuable asset to the environment.
Their other achievement is their CSR rooted solution for farming. In the drought-hit village where fields lay unused for years, their CSR technology gave farmers a ray of hope to start farming and cultivating crops in the once-barren fields. Their CSR technology has won many international accolades besides winning them the National Geographic Gold Award.
In rooted solution technology, besides the crop that is farmed, farmers bury a mud pot full of water beside the crops. The mud pots have minute pores from which water leaks consistently providing a steady water supply to the crops and also preventing the wastage of water. They just need to fill with water once 15-20 days and makes growing crops easier and allows for rapid growth in production in the drought-hit village where water supply was very scarce.
The technology is now used worldwide and Karma Tips has won international acclaim for the technology. The establishment of Karma Tips changed the entire village and the lives of the people living in it. “We want people to be inspired by our work and step forward into making this world a better place to live,” says Vedobroto.
Ved and Chetana are on the way to create a model village where the villagers are self-reliant and employed to ensure that no one goes hungry due to lack of money once again. Vedobroto and his wife have also taken the responsibility of secondary education for the students of the village. For more details, visit: http://www.karmatips.in/