Sustainablity at Bagru, begins with caring for our environment and artisans

Trees are our lifelines, benevolent benefactors. They give us all and in abundance—greenery, oxygen, fruits, herbs, clean air, shelter, rain. They prevent soil erosion and keep the environment cool.

Over the years, we have planted more than 2,000 trees across Bagru village. Of these, about 1000 have survived. We continue to nurture them with a lot of love and care.

Hand block printing is a water-intensive industry. Since our water consumption is large, it was imperative for us to use and conserve it judiciously. All our units are therefore equipped with a rainwater harvesting system (RWHS). It supplies about 100 lakh liters of fresh rainwater every year to earth.
All the units also have effluent treatment plants (ETP), which help us recycle water that we use for various supporting activities.

To reduce our carbon footprint, we do not use fabrics made from polyester, nylon, acrylic, or others sourced from fossil fibers. We only use fabrics made of natural fibers. For our internal and local transportation, we use e-rickshaws. We do not use disposable plastic glasses/cups to serve tea to our staff/artisans.

We are also gradually reducing our dependence on electricity generated from coal or petroleum. We have taken various steps to switch to renewable sources and generate clean and sustainable energy:

1. Solar plants: We have installed 30 kVA solar plants (15 kVA in Bagru and 15 kVA in Sanganer unit) which takes care of 80% of our power load.
2. Solar heaters: We have installed solar heaters in our units for hot water to cut down the need for wood (we have reduced it by 40%), petroleum, and other non-renewable energy resources.

We source raw materials that are grown locally. It helps us reduce travel miles and the cost of our products drastically. We extract the natural dyes that we use at the Bagru unit from flowers, leaves, barks, roots, and gum of locally-grown trees like pomegranate, indigo, harda, turmeric, dahura, marigold, acacia.

We also use minerals such as limestone and raw salt that are available within 200 km of our unit. We use natural fiber-based fabric i.e. cotton that is grown in abundance in Rajasthan and the neighboring state of Gujarat.

To manage waste efficiently, we upcycle our leftover fabrics and create useful accessories, ropes, and carpets. Most of the accessories that we use in our garments and other products are made from recycled natural materials such as wood, coconuts, horns, metals, shells, and lac.