Juliet Thomas Christian Articles for Young Women
Angeline Babu and Rituparna Das of Silver Nut Tree create unique handcrafted products made from recycled products like PET bottles, glass bottles, old CDs and waste tyres. Their range of products consists of fashionable jewellery and home decor items. We meet the enterprising ladies who create treasures from trash
Silver Nut Tree is an idea that took root from the concept of finding the immense potential in everyday objects thrown away as trash. The very hard questions posed by a bunch of tiny tots led their moms to do some very serious thinking and remap the very perception of recycling. It started with a humble PET plastic bottle, which showed the promise of becoming a treasure that no owner would want to throw away, ending in our planets already bulging landfills and polluted oceans. The designers themselves realized that PET plastic is just one among the potential hazards and went on to find ways to up-cycle punctured rubber tubes, bottle caps, washers, nuts, CD’s and even glass bottles.
At Silver Nut Tree the experiments go on, on a daily basis turning ‘trash’ into viable beautiful products. Rituparna Das, a graphic designer and Angeline Babu, a former banker, are constantly thinking up new and innovative ways to put recyclable products to good and fashionable use.
Every time we make a piece of jewellery we know that we have reduced the amount of plastic going into a landfill
Q. What provoked you to start Silver Nut Tree?
It actually began when our kids were speaking to us about recycling over what they had been taught in school. We wanted to make our daughters understand that the concept of recycling was not boring and drab and wanted to show them that going green could be cool. Hence we made some earrings from cola bottle caps. This got us thinking and before you know it we were in the process of setting up a business manufacturing jewellery from PET bottles.
Q. Why did you choose to work with PET bottles? Do you also work with other waste materials?
The words plastic bottle and jewellery is an oxymoron. One does not co-relate the two on any level. There are a lot of people who work with PET bottles, but we wanted to create something so different that the end product in no way resembled the parent product. Hence we devised our own way of working with this material, colouring it, dying it, using particular techniques to make two pieces stick etc. It was all one long experiment for us.
We also work with glass bottles and used CDs to create our home decor range of decorative lamps and glow lamps. We make candle holders with old CDs. We’re also always exploring and looking for new things to work with.
Q. What are the most popular products that you sell?
It would have to be the jewellery and now, to a large extent the home decor products. We cater to a very niche market; the very eco-conscious people who want to use things that help reduce their carbon footprint. They love our jewellery – its colourful, unique, outlandish and one of its kind. We also have a range of semi-precious jewellery where the central piece of jewellery has been created from a recyclable product. These pieces are unique and often one does not realise that it is a recycled product.
Q. What would you say has been your greatest achievement so far?
Our aim has been to spread the green message. It heartens us to see people bringing their used plastic bottles, glass bottles, rubber waste and other such to us to create unique products for them. Every time we make a piece of jewellery we know that we have reduced the amount of plastic going into a landfill. Now even companies have gotten involved in our project and go on a drive to collect plastic and glass for us to reuse.
Interviewed by Archana Shenoy, Associate Editor, Vashti Woman.
