The freezer at Ashvita Bistro looks stark. All the packaged water bottles are gone. What remains are a few cans of beverage. “They were PET bottles, they had to go,” says Ashvin Rajagopalan who started Ashvita in 2002.
As part of a new drive, his cafes Ashvita Bistro and Nirvana will not stock or serve water in plastic bottles. Instead, clients will be offered glass bottles and jugs with water filled from bubble tops and RO systems. “On an average, my cafes sold about 150 bottles a day. But now, no more of that. My bottled water vendor doesn’t look happy about it, though,” he adds.
Climate change, global warming and environmental depletion are staring us in the face. For some in Chennai, it took the December rains to drive home the point. When the skies opened up last week, parts of the city flooded. The resulting panic and his desire to add to sustainability efforts saw Ashvin do away with all the plastic water bottles.
“I checked for flooding and leakages at my cafes, and then put up a status message on Facebook informing everybody about our plan. I’m hoping this picks up as a trend everywhere,” he says. Ashvin and his wife Shruti Harihara Subramaniam have, for a while now, been trying out sustainable alternatives. They have a roof top garden from where they source their vegetables and greens, and they are into composting and upcycling. That explains all the glass bottles in the cafe. Bottles that once held olives, spreads and other products are used as milkshake and juice glasses or just hold water or straws. “Yes, we are even planning to get rid of plastic straws and get paper ones,” adds Ashvin.
As someone who had been in the recycling business, Ashvin speaks of the enormous amount of energy consumed while recycling PET bottles. “First, the bottles go to a recycling plant where water and chemicals are used to clean them. Then, they go through machines where they are melted and reformed. It’s not a sustainable process,” he shakes his head.
Ashvin has initiated what can possibly turn into a plastic-free drive.
Like the town of Bundanoon in Australia or San Francisco in the U.S., among the first cities to ban plastic bottles, Chennai too can, hopefully, follow suit.
