Pooja Badamikar, a Pune based woman who did her post-graduation in renewable energy was doing an IT job when the idea of using scrap tyres for making footwear struck her mind. She left her job and started working towards this initiative and after two years, now she has her own brand Nimital that produces footwear from scrap tyres.
“One billion tyres are discarded annually in the world. I started working with help of local cobblers and made two prototypes. That’s how the journey began”, she said regarding her initial days. This whole initiative has not only helped her achieve her dream but also helped the environment to be pollution-free. She has been awarded the title of “upcoming women entrepreneur” in a competition for her remarkable performance in making India pollution-free.
She further explained how the whole recycling process is carried out and said, “Conventionally we use version rubber or plastic material as sole for footwear but we have replaced it with upcycled tyre and by that, we are helping to reduce the landfills, secondly we are helping to reduce the material like plastic to come to market and the third thing is we are reducing the use of resources such as oil and water which otherwise might have been consumed for manufacturing of that plastic or version rubber”. We can only hope more such initiatives are taken so that our mother earth can breathe without pollution blockage.