TRASH TO TREASURE

The winner of this year’s Circular Design Challenge lays bare his philosophy, process, and aspirations

- NIDA NAEEM

"Circularity is not just an environmental concept. It has to be scalable, it has to be socially conscious, and it doesn't have to squash people's desire for joy or abundance," says Anish Malpani, founder of Without, the eyewear brand that bagged this year's Circular Design Challenge award at Lakmé Fashion Week in partnership with FDCI.

Every few years, a new buzzword takes hold of fashion, only to be overused to the point of becoming a 'fuzzword'. Right now, sustainability is the term du jour and as the scale of greenwashing becomes more apparent by the day, the need for actionable steps to affect genuine change takes centre stage. India's only fashion sustainability award, CDC is in its fifth year, and this time, R Elan went global, collaborating with the UN to scout out six innovative brands from across India, the UK, EU, and APAC.

Without's sunglasses are made entirely out of discarded chips packets, which are procured from waste pickers and recycled. Malpani believes that one of the reasons for his victory was the depth of Without's materiality: "The heart of what we do is circular. We're focused on using waste and increasing the value of that waste. Design comes later, and is only a tool for us." With no formal design training, Malpani left his cushy nine-to-five job in the US and came back to India with the vision to solve real social and environmental problems. His background in finance becomes evident when he frames the central question as "How can humans become net positive assets instead of net negative assets?"

The way he sees it, changing consumer behaviour is especially hard in a rapidly developing economy like India. Malpani elaborates, "Being able to care about the environment is a luxury. There's still a massive low-income segment here that is not incentivised to care about the environment.