Green designs in your home

Look closely at the phone below. What do you think that mosaic-like material with the interesting texture on the body of the phone is? It's Ecolink board made from compressed tetrapak "" yes, the stuff that is used to pack the teas and fruit drinks so that they last.

The technology was developed by Tetrapak, the company, and the manufacturing is done by Deluxe Recycling in Palghar near Mumbai. Tetrapak commissioned Satish Gokhale of Design Directions, Pune, to come up with a range of innovative products using Ecolink in 2004 "" furniture, clip-boards, file-covers and even pens.

But now a host of architects and interior designers are starting to use it as a green alternative to wood, or making the most of its aesthetic appeal in decorative partitions and walls, and exploiting its water-resistant properties by using it for the roofing.

"Another dream property is that Ecolink is thermoformable, that is, it has the ability to bend and make desirable shapes," says Snehal Vasani, a furniture designer, in his commendation of the material.

Paper trail

Can you weave paper? It may sound weird but it's regularly done at Xylem Papercrafts's Noida factory. "It was a technique developed with an NID graduate, Usha Prajapati, who interned with us," informs Anuradha Patni, who started the firm along with husband Manohar Devraj.

Paper strips left over from the couple's business "" which involves designing and supplying hand-made paper and paper products to high-end stores in the West "" is stored, sorted by colour. The strips are then folded thinner and then inserted by hand between the warp thread of a handloom.

Different colours are combined to bring about interesting effects. The finished product is made into rugs, wall hangings (pix), handbags, book-bindings, and so on. Recycling is part of the DNA at Xylem (the couple are also promoters of Rickshaw Recycle at the Garden of Five Senses) and other than woven paper, old film posters and flex banners are also used.