Women have been at the frontlines of sustainable living since times immemorial, even if it wasn’t called that until recently. Yesterday’s “grandma hacks” are recognized as cool eco-tips today! There can be no doubt that for the sustainability movement to be meaningful and transformational, it would take diverse women across geographies, expertise, professions, age and social groups, and varied experiences to be at the forefront of driving change, not just in their own spheres of influence but through collaboration and forming solidarities.
There can be no doubt that for the sustainability movement to be meaningful and transformational, it would take diverse women across geographies, expertise, professions, age and social groups, and varied experiences to be at the forefront of driving change, not just in their own spheres of influence but through collaboration and forming solidarities.
Whether a CEO or a homemaker, a techie or an artiste, everyone can play a role in contributing to making a difference, whether by creating awareness, finding technological and other solutions to the climate challenges we face, making lifestyle changes in personal lives or in making an impact through institutions and businesses for a sustainable future.
Indian Women Making Sustainability Mainstream
Indian women are spearheading conversations and solutions for a better planet using their unique voices, talents, and expertise through multiple channels and mediums. We once again shine the spotlight on some remarkable women who are shaping climate conversations and providing adaptable solutions.
Read our previous stories to meet more incredible women changemakers here and here.
1. Chaitsi Ahuja: Founder of e-commerce portal Brown Living, Chaitsi runs a ‘plastic-free’ marketplace curating eco-friendly and sustainable products and brands across varied categories. It has turned out to be a go-to site for the conscious consumer looking for authentic planet-friendly alternatives in one place.
While it might be hard to lead a 100% plastic-free life, people can minimize it with various alternatives. That’s where Chaitsi’s Brown Living comes in with a product range of home compostable kitchen essentials, self-care products, stationery goods, food items, and many others.
As Chaitsi says, “At Brown Living, we are building a new sustainable economy by making sustainability easy, accessible, and affordable to Indian consumers. Indians have been native to living sustainably, and we’re here to scale that behaviour through our platform”.
Insider tip – Brown Living is our partner brand in the TGL Tribe membership program, where, as a TGL Tribe member, you are entitled to great members-only offers on the full product range in the store.
2. Vani Murthy: Popularly known as Wormrani (which is also her Instagram handle), a homemaker turned digital content creator, Vani Murthy is one of the most loved sustainability crusaders online. Composting and handling waste in an urban set-up is a topic that can make even the most conscious people sceptical.
And yet, she is able to inspire the youth and create a fan base online with her positive and compassionate way of teaching. In simple reels and short videos, she documents her low-waste lifestyle, while educating about waste management, home composting, and living consciously. The simplicity of the educational material that she creates from her home makes her stand out in a very relatable way. She is a founding member of the Solid Waste Management Roundtable (SWMRT), Bengaluru – a collective of waste management practitioners working for the adoption of sustainable waste management practices by citizens & municipalities.
3. Sushma Soma: An acclaimed Carnatic musician, Sushma actively raises awareness about current environmental and climate concerns, using music as her language. “I carry a lot of emotions from wonderment to grief about how I feel about the planet,” said the artist whose album, Home, (released last year) about a human-earth relationship, received rave reviews from prestigious publications like Rolling Stone and Songlines and was also featured by BBC.
She is currently the lead curator of Home SOS: Sounds of Sustainability, an upcoming traveling concert across India, that aims to put the spotlight on the impact of citizen actions on the planet. Sushma adds, “Home SOS appeals to everyone to reflect on just one thing – what is the consequence of my choice on our beloved planet?” She continues, “I want my music to embody the emotions I live with daily.”
4. Shivya Nath: Shivya is one of the most popular travel storytellers in the country. She has been traveling solo since 2013, documenting her stories in her blog, The Shooting Star, and published a book in 2018 with the same name. Responsible tourism, supporting local economies, participating in environmental initiatives, and educating about sustainability, especially concerning travel, has been her forte as a traveler. Shivya’s work has been recognized and appreciated by platforms like BBC, National Geographic Travel, The Washington Post, and Travel+Leisure, amongst others.
In 2022, Shivya was selected among the 30 Global Champions of Environmental Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism at the Global Hospitality Awards.
5. Deepa Sai: A content strategist and sustainable business consultant, Deepa Sai runs a platform called ecoHQ to bring sustainability professionals and experts in the Indian sustainability scene of multiple domains into one platform and build easy yet informative exchanges of ideas and experience-based knowledge. “Sustainability discussions today are private. Experts who know about unfair practices do not publicly disclose them and the final consumer has little time to research what’s beneficial for them.
So, we need more interactions with diverse groups, including consumers and civic action groups, to know what’s happening behind the scenes. Through ecoHQ, I want to start more dialogues and get people to think, invest and choose well for themselves, and the planet,” says Deepa.
ecoHQ aims to enable people to make informed choices and learn how their consumption patterns affect their physical and mental health, families, and immediate surroundings.
6. Shweta Dalmia: Shweta is the founder of The Climapreneur Show – a platform that brings Climate Action stories through podcasts, featuring entrepreneurs driving climate action. Her one-on-one engaging conversations with experts in varied fields of sustainability give listeners an easy, honest, and uncomplicated understanding of different views on a vast range of topics and their environmental impact.
Talking about The Climapreneur Show, Shweta says, “Climate change conversations need to be driven from a solution-oriented approach. We cannot afford the risk to drive conversations with either too much fear or too much hope. Studies suggest that fear paralyzes people leading to inaction and too much hopemakes people believe that someone else is solving the issues and figuring out a way. At Climapreneur, we always followed a solution-driven approach, showing people how things can be solved and what they can do, through real stories and roadmaps, which give people pathways to build their own sustainable journeys with resilience.”
7. Arundhati Kumar: Arundhati is the founder of Beej Studio, a fashion and lifestyle accessories brand made in plant-based alternatives to leather, like Cork and Pinatex (made out of pineapple waste), amongst other innovative materials. “Sustainability in fashion is still a very elitist conversation in India. With Beej, we want to make it mainstream and easy to adopt. My vision is to build Beej into a brand that allows people to make informed fashion choices for a better tomorrow”, says Arundhati.
Arundhati also runs a campaign called ‘Reverse the Stripes’, which is a movement to mitigate climate change. With this, Arundhati along with her team at Beej are on a mission to build India’s largest climate awareness community. It is to Beej’s creditthat the products are as high on fashion and style quotient as they are on sustainability credentials!
8. Neelakshi Mour: An architect and designer by training, Neelakshi Mour is the co-founder of Bluegrey Studio, an architectural design studio inclined towards zero-waste construction methods. In her own words, “Sustainable Architecture is a misleading and vague term. In fact, in my opinion, construction is one of the most wasteful and destructive industries. But a lot of people are working towards making construction less damaging and mitigating its inevitable impacts. And that is what counts in the present scenario. Awareness and mindfulness as designers. Because as we all know with great power comes great responsibility.”
In 2018, Neelakshi was part of a design+built workshop, a collaborative project in the flood-prone river island of Majuli in Assam that focused on flood-resilient structures and bamboo as the primary construction material. It took them a month, and active community participation, to build a new government school where the old school used to get washed away in the floods every monsoon. The school has since then survived four monsoons! Alongside architecture, Neelakshi is also a member of The Midway Journey, a waste reduction & management organization based in Guwahati.
9. Neeti Mehra: A content writer and sustainability strategist, Neeti has been in the industry for 17 years, with her work has appeared in over 60 global publications such as Lonely Planet, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller, The Voice of Fashion, etc. She runs a popular blog called The Beej Living, which promotes and educates about slow living and sustainable lifestyles across various topics such as travel, fashion, and wellness.
As Neeti explains on her website, “Slow living is an antidote to our fast-paced lives. It’s a long-term view of your own life and the world around you. Slow living helps you control the narrative of your own life, where you are not defined by the standards, timelines, and a lifestyle the world decides for you, but what you decide for yourself.”
While the topic of sustainability is becoming more discussed and debated in the last few years, most of the conversations around climate remain complex and often full of jargon. For environmental awareness to grow and sustainable solutions to penetrate the mainstream, the conversation cannot remain confined to a handful of sustainability crusaders.
As the author, Anne Marie Bonneau says so eloquently “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”
Former COO of Meta Platforms and writer of the leadership book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg said, “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.”
It’s 2023, and almost every person in the world is personally a witness to the effects of climate change and environmental damage, but women and girls are disproportionately more vulnerable to the adverse impact due to the existing gender disparities. With the climate crisis set to intensify, India and the world needs more women to join the climate change movement and come forward, speak, stand up for each other, form alliances, and act.
With so many inspiring women leading the charge and as more join them, it is only with equal participation and leadership by women using their empathy, compassion, position, power, voice, and skills can the future be sustainable and just.
All images are sourced from LinkedIn, except Vani Murthy’s which is sourced from here.
