Sustainability - What it means to me... Part 3 of n

Clothes: The Circular Economy We Practised Without Naming It

In the 1980s, many middle-class families in India wore clothes that followed a surprisingly disciplined life cycle. It wasn’t branded as “sustainable.” It was simply how households managed money, time, and resources—and in hindsight, it functioned like a small circular economy.

1) Made-to-measure (and made to last)

Readymade clothing wasn’t the default. Most families had “their” tailor—someone trusted, familiar, and booked well in advance. New clothes were typically stitched once or twice a year, often around Diwali or the New Year.

It was a process with its own rhythm. A month or two before the festival season, the tailor would be scheduled to come home for several days. Wages were negotiated. Cloth was purchased in advance. And then the house would temporarily turn into a small production unit: measuring tape, chalk marks, cut fabric stacks, and a steady hum of stitching.

The choices were practical. Siblings might get shirts or kurtas made from the same cloth. Cousins often showed up in near-identical material, to the dismay of the kids and the complete indifference of cost-conscious mothers. The objective wasn’t novelty. It was value.

2) A built-in reuse ladder

The most interesting part wasn’t how clothes were made—it was how they moved through the household.

A garment usually began its life as “outside wear” or formal wear. After several months, it would be reassigned as casual wear. Then it would become home wear. And if the fabric held up, it would take a final turn as cleaning cloth—wiping, polishing, dusting—before disappearing completely.

Without any lectures about “waste,” households practiced a simple rule: extract maximum utility from every metre of fabric.

3) Barter + resale: the informal second life

Then came the part that still fascinates me: resale without cash.

Every few months, a familiar figure would appear in many neighbourhoods—women who carried new steel vessels and offered them in exchange for old clothes. In some homes they were called the bartanwali—the steel-vessel barter women. There would be negotiation, haggling, and a careful weighing of what was “worth” what. Old jeans and polyester sometimes fetched a premium—not because they were better, but because they signalled modernity at the time.

What happened next completed the loop. These women would gather a collection of garments, do small repairs, and resell them—often in places like the Ravivari (Sunday) market along the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. Clothes moved from one household to another, not as charity, but as commerce: repaired, recirculated, and re-valued.

4) The sustainability lesson (without nostalgia)

This system wasn’t perfect. But it was efficient.

It relied on local production and local repair skills. It had a natural cap on consumption because buying was seasonal and planned. It created multiple “use phases” for a single item. And it embedded resale and reuse into everyday life—without apps, without branding, without guilt.

The point isn’t to romanticise the past. It’s to notice that sustainability is often less about heroic individual choices and more about how a system is set up. When a system makes repair easy, resale normal, and overbuying inconvenient, waste shrinks almost automatically.

Maybe that’s the real question for today: not “How do we shop better?” but “How do we rebuild the loops that made better outcomes the default?”

Sustainability - What it means to me... 4 of n

Food

When I look back at my childhood in the seventies and eighties, I can still smell the aromas wafting from my mother’s kitchen. Every meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—was prepared at home, lovingly cooked by mothers and grandmothers. There was no special treatment, no "kids menu," and certainly no endless buffet of alternative cuisines. The rule was simple: eat what was cooked, or go hungry.

Restaurants were rare, and even when they did exist, eating out was seen as a luxury that few families indulged in. For most Indian children of that time, the concept of pizzas, burgers, or Thai curries was completely alien. What we had was wholesome, balanced, home-cooked food—simple, yet nourishing.

The Shift to Convenience

Fast forward to today, and the story is very different. On average, families now eat out or order takeaway at least once a week. Food delivery apps have made it possible to access an endless choice of cuisines at the tap of a finger. Children today are spoilt for choice—Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Indian, Thai—you name it, it can be delivered in under 30 minutes.

But this convenience has come at a cost. We are slowly abandoning the tradition of cooking at home in favor of restaurants and takeaways. The result? A rise in obesity, lifestyle-related diseases, and a disconnect from the very food that sustains us.

Why Eating at Home Matters

Home-cooked meals aren’t just healthier; they also represent sustainability in action. Cooking at home means:

• Less packaging waste compared to takeaways.

• Controlled portions and ingredients, reducing excess and promoting health.

• Connection to tradition and family, as cooking often brings people together.

The Value of Leftovers

Another sustainable practice we often overlook is the value of leftovers. In earlier times, leftovers weren’t wasted—they were reinvented into new meals for the next day. A simple dal could become a paratha filling; rice could be transformed into fried rice or curd rice. Today, leftovers are often thrown away, contributing to food waste on a massive scale. Embracing leftovers is not just about frugality—it’s about respecting the resources, energy, and effort that went into producing that food.

A Call Back to the Kitchen

Sustainability isn’t only about solar panels and electric cars—it begins in our kitchens. Cooking at home more often, making creative use of leftovers, and reducing dependency on processed, restaurant-prepared food are small but powerful steps. They improve our health, lower our environmental impact, and preserve the traditions we grew up with.

So maybe it’s time to reintroduce that old rule: eat what’s made at home—or go hungry. In doing so, we may just rediscover a healthier, more sustainable way of living.

Sustainability what it means to me.. 3 of n

Old Notebooks

As a school going boy, the empty pages in the notebooks at the end of the year were removed carefully and assembled in a stack. Several such notebooks yielded some significant amount of ruled paper which then got carefully bound with a thread and ended up as a rough note book for the next school year.  

When I started doing this for my daughter, twenty years later, she was reprimanded by her teacher to use a new notebook for her rough work.  What has changed from the past? Is it just a fad or fashion to be called sustainable but not practice it from the core?

Image courtesy bplanet / FreeDigitalphotos.net

Computer stationery

In the times when I was a tenth grader, computers were a luxury and PC's did not exist. They required large rooms and were a source of envy for most. Printers were huge and they used reams and reams of perforated paper for the output - (the monitors as we know then today also did not exist.) The backs of these papers were blank and the printed side was ruled. It could have been other way around but I cannot recollect now. Dad would bring these home after the computer department would be finished with these printouts and they were "raddi" or waste for them and Dad would collect them from office and I would practice my math sums on them.

To this day, I insist that the prints taken from the printers today are at least used on both the sides before they are discarded as there is at least a 50% saving on the paper consumption. Down the line this saves trees and forests.

Printing

I remember the day I bought my first printer twenty years back. Since then, I have always been conscious of how and when to print. One of the more “sustainable” ways that I use is

• Use the other blank side of printed paper.
• If you are just printing for reading, try printing two pages on the same page. This way you actually end up saving much more than 50% but I won’t bother you with the math.
• Use refilled cartridges for your everyday printing. I know the printer companies are going to frown on this but then it is more sustainable as the cartridges don’t end up in a trash can and someone gets a job refilling your cartridges and you get a cheaper print.

Sustainabilty is not a fashion or a plaque on a building, its a way of life and an attitude

Sustainibility - What it means to me.. Part 2 of n

I have often had people look at me weirdly when I use the unused blank side of a paper which has been printed. In my opinion its a perfectly justifiable use of paper for sketches or making small notes. This attitude has been with me since my teenage years.
In this post I am going to write about the Indian attitude towards "Paper" in general and how we have been traditionally sustainable - long before the email signatures of today "Do you need to print this?"
The first part of this series is here.

Newspaper

As a child, I remember there was a special place in the house where all the old newspapers were accumulated for a whole month. Bhaiyyaji would come at the end of every month with his usual sing-song voice calling out - "paassti -paper". Pasti - is a vernacular gujarati word meaning "waste paper".  He would have a fixed rate per kilogram for English and a slightly lower rate for the vernacular - gujarati papers. Probably the english newspapers used a different quality of paper.

A few months' old newspapers would get you the money for about half month's worth of subscription money. But that was never the point. The newspapers ended up getting recycled in various ways. 

The neighbourhood retailer would probable buy the old newspapers from the bhaiyyaji and the old newspapers would end up as wrapping paper for your monthly rations which you would purchase from him. 

These wrapping papers also ended up being recycled ! Mom would carefully unwrap them and empty the contents into a steel container with a lid (dabba) and remove the creases from the paper and store them separately. These would then emerge from the storage place when the veggies were being peeled or the poha or flour was being dehusked to gather the waste remains. Only then would these land up in the waste bin. 

This became a system year after year and a routine to be followed. Bargaining with the raddiwallah bhaiyyaji became a passion and a pastime. It rarely yielded more than 50 paise more than the rate but it was definitely no mean achievement.

Another use for  the newspapers that was quite common, was to use them as shelf liners or backing sheets. These helped in absorbing the moisture and probably the smell of ink from the newspaper kept the insects away. The shelf lining was changed every few months and it used to be fun to read the old news and reminisce the past. We still follow this inf our home wherever we go. I get teased by my colleagues when I take the old newspapers from them for such insignificant uses. In my city in India, this tradition has now been modernised and one can have your old newspapers picked up at a pre decided price. Talk about being conveniently sustainable!!

More on paper in the next post

Sustainibility - What it means to me.. Part 1 of n

In the past few years the word "Sustainability" has probably been the most used and abused word. Penny pinching sometimes qualifies as sustainability and at times it is deemed as "too expensive".

How can being sustainable be deemed expensive?

If you are living in the Gulf, yes being sustainable can actually mean being expensive. Let's take the case of gasoline or petrol - whatever you call it in your part of the world.

While the rest of the world is probably forming laws on car sharing and LEED gives incentives for Car pooling, reduces the amount of car parking spaces and gives a credit if you include bicycle parking, the middle east clients gawk at you if you suggest any of this. 

Fact 1: Petrol / Gas cost (per litre of course) - 100 fils for 90-octane is cheaper than a can of coke 330 ml - 150 fils

Fact 2: Public transport - almost non existent except in Dubai and parts of UAE.

Fact 3: Most of the labour (Read Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Srilankan and Filipino) is imported.

Ultimately all this boils down to the fact that you either end up buying a car or renting one. The Indian notion of trying to figure out "kitna deti hai?" (What's the average?) doesn't come into the picture at all as the measure of how much fuel one uses is not a factor of fuel efficiency but the number of trips one needs to make to the gas station. One no longer says "500 ka daalo". Its more like "Full tank please" and the maximum one would pay – depending on the capacity of your monster 's belly (gas tank) – would be in the vicinity of 5 Dinars to 8 Dinars (600 Rs – 960 Rs) for 50 to 80 litres of 90 octane petrol. A full tank would reasonably last for about 400-600 km or let's say a week of travel.

This false feeling of abundance of petrol has resulted in the following

·         Size of your ego = size of your car.

·         Most Car manufacturers have "special" models for the Middle east which have "better" airconditioners!

·         The Hummer, probably sells the maximum number of units in the Middle East.

·         You don't switch off your engine at signals and your car airconditioner runs full blast. Even if you are picking up your child from school, you would be nuts if you switch off your engine while you wait.

·         You don't hesitate to go 20 kms out of your way to pick up your veggies from a hyper market at the other end of town.

·         If you have the time, you can go home for lunch – even if you live 20 kms from your work place.

This is true for locals and expats alike.

In this scenario how can one be sustainable?