About Us
A visit to a zero waste store in Brighton, in the year 2021, is what ignited my interest in starting a zero waste store in India. I have a background in English Literature and Journalism, so my parents (understandably) were initially against the idea of my setting up a business at all. But they also saw how preceding my Brighton visit, I had been practicing a zero waste lifestyle for 3 years, which meant that I had very strong feelings attached to the idea.
When I had started switching to a zero waste (low waste, more accurately) lifestyle in 2019, I wasn’t on social media and so I depended on my parents for figuring out eco-friendly switches. “What did you use before shampoos were commonly available?”, was one of the first questions I asked my dad. And he introduced me to soapnuts.
My parents also told me about convenience stores of their time, which had no plastic, used only ropes & brown paper bags for packaging, and expected shoppers to carry a big cloth bag with them for all their shopping.
The zero waste store I visited in Brighton matched my parents’ descriptions almost exactly. And so I thought, “why don’t we bring this back to India?”
My father, the most supportive and loving father that one could ask for, also happens to be a businessman who volunteered to help me set up the business.
He always scolds me when I call him the co-founder of Eco Friend, but in all honesty, he has played too big a role in helping to materialize the business to be called anything less.
My mother, who was once the one most opposed to the idea of this business, now stands beside me at every single exhibition and proves to be the best saleswoman no matter where we go.
Eco Friend started as my idea but is now more like a family effort to help people choose sustainable products for reasonable prices. After all, we depend on our environment for survival, so we ought to treat it with kindness.. right?
Unlike generic daily-use products, the products we offer are good for your health and kind to our planet. You should know that we reject 90% of the products we sample from because quality, affordability and honest-sustainability are of utmost importance to us.
Shifting to a sustainable lifestyle is truly the kindest switch we can make for ourselves and for every living being on our planet!