Repurpose with a purpose Give discarded articles a new role.

Repurposing has entered the lexicon of those who wish to respond aesthetically and creatively to environmental concerns in the new millennium, where ‘use, don’t waste’ has become a mantra. Repurposing must not be confused with its cousin, re-use, which, as the term suggests, means reusing something. For example, empty pickle jars can be used to pack more pickles or perhaps jam instead of being thrown away.

Repurposing is far more involved. It requires imagination to transform an item’s function to serve a purpose other than it was initially designed for. A typical example that you come across on the net is converting an old piano into a bookshelf! You are not making it a better instrument for your children to practice on, but you are giving it a new purpose to display books.

One celebrated example of repurposing from the 1950s–60s is the Rock Garden in Chandigarh. Spread over 40 acres, it has been sculpted from industrial, home and discarded items. Its creator, Nek Chand Saini, a government official, collected material from dumping sites around the city and created the garden. What finally emerged was a landscape of interlinked waterfalls punctuated by sculptures and pathways embellished with scraps of several kinds —old bottles, broken tiles, ceramic pots, sinks, broken pipes, electrical waste, etc.

Now, only an exceptional few among us can have the artistry or patience to pull off another marvel like the one the late Nek Chand Saini brought to life. However, we can give a new purpose and life to a discarded fan, furniture or suitcase lying in the attic of our ancestral home. I believe such an act would give us immense creative satisfaction.

I was inspired to give repurposing a closer look when a friend of mine who lives in Bengaluru showed me pictures of a swing in her verandah that she had fashioned from a discarded ornate door she had chanced upon in her old ancestral home in rural Andhra Pradesh. It looked elegant and old-worldly. “There are several treasures you can discover in these old houses which you can put to use,” she wisely observed. I was immediately reminded of another friend from Kerala who had repurposed a discarded wide community cooking vessel made of metal into a chic and unusual drawing room table after covering its open top with glass.

But do we have to hunt for treasures in old mansions in disrepair to find ­interesting objects for repurposing? Sometimes, our attic will do, or the assortment of material we give to the raddiwala may yield some hidden gems. I am told that an old medium-sized ­suitcase can be repurposed into a comfortable chair by attaching four wooden legs to its bottom surface and filling the top and bottom folds with comfortable foam cushions. Now all you have to do is rest the backrest of your ‘new’ chair against a wall in a cosy corner of
the room.

Similarly, you can imaginatively use two old wooden ladders to create your innovative and avant-garde bookshelf. Nail the two ladders horizontally, one below the other, and use the steps as shelves to place books. You will find that it works well.

One unique repurposing of old tennis racquets I encountered was in a house in Delhi. All the lady of the house had done was remove the strings from the striking surface of her son’s old racquets and replace them with mirrors! The racquets enjoy pride of place in her hallway, and it does look chic.

Indian families have traditionally been very adept at repurposing. In villages, our women are known to work wonders with old clothes. In Punjab, it is a done thing to collect old clothes, tear them into bits of equal size and stitch layers and layers of them together to make a hardy, washable comforter for the winter months.

Talking of bits of cloth, I am reminded of my aunt who used to keep aside old saree blouses, petticoats and soft muslin cloth. Whenever a newborn was expected in the family, she would bring out her treasure and repurpose it into a whole lot of nappies for the child. Today, diapers have taken the place of cloth nappies. They may be convenient, but for the environment they are a big no-no. They are made of synthetic material which is non-biodegradable, and one of the biggest polluters in the western world. Now, the habit of using diapers is spreading in urban India as well. We are forgetting how we used to repurpose soft cloth to make them, and then reuse them by washing.

Also, our addiction to fast fashion has translated into clothes being worn a few times and then discarded for the latest trends and designs pushed by influencers. The rejected clothes invariably end up at landfills and are neither repurposed nor reused.

The problem perhaps lies in the fact that all of us are in a hurry to achieve something or the other, and we do not see that in our pursuit of acquiring material conveniences, we have a global emergency right before our eyes. We have an earth that is heating up, our landfills are filling up, our rivers and oceans are polluted, and our homes cannot do without air purifiers. In the face of such a calamity why can’t we simply pledge to repurpose, reuse and recycle?

The writer is a senior journalist who writes on environmental issues