Most of us open the Cayal - Our Local Renting page with one thought in our minds - what less can we buy today! As simple as it may sound, this thought is the most important driving force behind the dream of sustainable living.
I started my journey on eco-friendly practices sometime in 2012. Back then, I wasn't aware of sustainable living and jumped on segregation of the waste we generated and composting it only because it just seemed like the right thing to do with BBMP not picking waste from individual homes. It was probably the first time i started to look at the waste I generate more cautiously and began introspecting on "where my trash really goes?"
Being a hardcore Bengaluru girl at heart, I have witnessed this beautiful laidback serene green city turn into a garbage city and that provoked me to read up further about best practices with respect to waste segregation and how to properly dispose off the waste we generate.
I started aerobic composting in the confines of my then tiny balcony and I am happy to share that i have not looked back since. Been 7+ years now that i harvest Black Gold regularly, yet that feeling of not trashing the world and that feeling of giving back to nature is priceless!! This is what happens when you carry out a sustainable process, there is just no looking back, because its just the right thing to do!
As a next step, I started growing my veggies in my balcony. Learnt the challenges of container gardening and how to address them. Made like-minded friends and now there's no looking back. Today I can whole heartedly claim that growing your own food is probably the biggest environmental impact one can have. Your food travelling less to reach you just makes so much sense now when you think of the word - sustainability!
As the sustainability bug hit the other aspects of my lifestyle, I pondered how much we really buy and most importantly if we really need all of it. The 3R mantra of Reduce- Reuse - Recycle motivated me to think of the different aspects of my life which I could change.
With a toddler at home then in 2012, toys were a norm! Buying what we felt was good for her was common, however, slowly my focus shifted to renting toys as I understood that children outgrow toys. That was when i first started renting toys way back in 2012. When my second one was born, I had made up my mind about not buying new toys as I already had enough and was only going to reuse them. I only wanted to rent more children's stuff as I understood how they outgrow stuff very quickly.
It was during one such occasions when I was looking to rent a costume for a Halloween party, that I connected with the founder of Cayal, Anandhi. I was probably one of the first customers of this lovely local renting platform in Oct 2017 - back then, it was just a pilot on Whatsapp! – Now I am a regular there and have seen Cayal has grown across users and categories. Imagine items gathering dust at your place being put to good use elsewhere or Imagine not having to buy a grand dress which you might probably use only once! Just makes so much sense indeed!
Below is a picture of the sewing machine i rented on Cayal. I repurposed old dhoties into cotton squares for my little one and sarees to table runners and cushion covers. When you repurpose and reuse, you inch a little closer to that dream of sustainability too! And the icing on the cake - sewing machine on rent!
Below is a picture of the sewing machine i rented on Cayal. I repurposed old dhoties into cotton squares for my little one and sarees to table runners and cushion covers. When you repurpose and reuse, you inch a little closer to that dream of sustainability too! And the icing on the cake - sewing machine on rent!
Thanks to everyone who has been silently marching towards the dream of sustainable living by buying one less thing and renting it/putting it up for rent instead ! Surely one of the best things to do for our planet!
