• Award Category: Most Socially-Relevant Initiative
  • Introduction: Saanvi Nagpal is a 16-year-old, Class 10 student from Darbari Lal DAV Model School, Shalimar Bagh, New Delhi
  • Achievement: Utilizes fabric scraps to make Dresses, Bags and Mats

Tonnes of textile waste is thrown away every year which decomposes over the years and ends up in landfills, posing immense danger to the environment. Saanvi Nagpal, a 16-year-old, Class 10 student from DL DAV Model School, New Delhi, has creatively transformed the fabric scraps into fashionable dresses, mats and bags. She started making dresses, bags, etc., and giving employment opportunities to unemployed people and helping them become skilled labourers.

How it All Started?

Saanvi conducted a short survey in which she talked to domestic helpers and tailors in the neighbourhood. She started this initiative with the aim of turning fabric scraps into garments as a best practice in Waste Management and providing employment to the underprivileged. 

Survey Findings

Saanvi conducted a short survey in which she studied that tailors are left with around 5-6 kgs of waste material, fabric scraps called Kattran, per week. She came up with the idea that domestic helpers can start small-scale manufacturing businesses without any big investment and can upcycle the textile waste into dresses, mats and bags. 

Saanvi’s Achievements

Saanvi has participated and presented this project at the Indian Young Inventors Innovators Challenge organized by Govt. of India on the title Social Technology for Sustainable Living. In addition, she has presented this project at the International Invention Innovation Expo 2022. This initiative is also creating upskilling and employment opportunities.

Click here to see Saanvi’s Achievements 

Other Initiatives

Use of Mushroom Mycelium to Prepare Leather-Like Material

While working on this initiative, Saanvi came up with a new initiative of using Mushroom Mycelium to prepare synthetic leather and construction material. 

Mycelium Brick 

A mycelium brick is an organic brick that is formed from organic waste and the mycelium of the fungus. Saanvi came up with another initiative: The idea of sustainable living resulted in the employment of a lot of people who lost their livelihood (like the maids from neighbouring households). 

She also understood that a person can open up a business without big capital investment. This step can be a small effort to uplift and empower the weaker sections of society by providing employment to unemployed maids by turning these scraps into usable materials like table clothes, bed sheets and clothes.

Click here to see Saanvi’s Other Achievements

Saanvi Nagpal is a finalist for Most Socially-Relevant Initiative because of her resolution to save the environment with the help of textile waste and her other sustainability-oriented initiatives. 

Click here to see all information shared by Saanvi