An Upcycling Artist promotes Sustainability and create Awareness
October 20th , 2019 | Uma Dotc
Trending Articles
Suseum - The Sustainability Museum
Hi! I am Uma Dotc an Upcylist, Sustainability lifestyle promoter with years of experience in creating awareness and setting up sustainability initiatives for waste management. I was no different from others, I started my career in IT and for some reasons satisfaction was always a compromise as a Graphic Designer. It was indeed a creative profession which I enjoyed but deep down I was looking for something more and great. I took a break in my career and joined a consulting firm for renewable energy as a graphic designer where in a year; we started this initiative to spread awareness among people for sustainable living. We set up a museum named “Suseum – The Sustaibability Museum” to create awareness for sustainable lifestyle among people. Here we showcased various alternatives on how people can lead an eco-friendly sustainable lifestyle.
​
Upcycle It
Guided tours for Sustainable lifestyle
Suseum was all about from the time people wake up and go to sleep; we found every alternative that they can replace in their everyday lifestyle with eco-friendly products. We set up a pavilion for sustainable living, a pavilion for different types of waste we generate everyday as an individual, waste to value products made of out of those waste, Renewable energy alternatives that can be used in everyday lives and a vertical garden pavilion at our balcony. In cities people often complain about no space to have a garden, we in fact showed people how they can have their own vertical garden in balconies with waste water bottles. I use to give guided tours for kids and others about the museum and importance of sustainable lifestyle. We also conducted workshops and saving the planet games which made sustainability simpler for kids and made a huge impact in them.
Suseum
The Idea to Upcycle It
My passion from design to sustainability already took a turn and after this museum got closed I started my own initiative named “Upcycle It” to again create awareness among people for waste and how waste can be of value. I was conducting upcycling workshops for kids in IIT, Ashram which had more than 350 Kids, Gated communities, etc., Kids will bring waste from their homes and after the workshop they will go home with an upcyled product that was made out of waste. I was focusing more on kids as it was easy to change their behavior as adults are more comfortable with modern lifestyle which makes the behavioral change towards sustainable lifestyle difficult for adults. I was creating this awareness for more than 3 years and I also did different jobs during this time to make my living.
Upcycled Products
Environment friendly solution for our Waste problems
I started to realize, world needs more than creating awareness among people and promoting upcycling. Now days awareness about climate change and its impact is everywhere and I wanted to do something more on a larger scale. If we think about how to treat the humongous amount of waste that various sectors generate, waste that’s piled up on streets and landfills etc.,. It’s a huge challenge altogether to treat them. All the activities I was doing made impact on a smaller scale and when thinking of making a wider impact, I joined a waste management firm, where we are providing technological solutions for various types of waste. Waste is a major problem everywhere and we need to manage it and treat it in an environment friendly manner.
I am glad that I have started my new journey towards contributing to the environment and I hope I could make a significant difference to the same.
Someone quoted “It’s not about doing good, it’s about doing it right way”
The author of the story is Uma Dotc, Founder of "Upcycle It" and you can reach out to her here
InwasteR is only a platform to share WaStory and the views and experience are purely of the author.