They Wanted A Sustainable Wedding Card
When they didn’t find one, they created it
Today’s sustainable snapshot👇🏽
They Wanted A Sustainable Wedding Card
Quiz Time!
Startup of the Week: Roha Biotech
5 Sustainable Brands That I Recently Discovered
3 Stories That Lifted My Spirits This Week
They Wanted A Sustainable Wedding Card
Back in 2016, Garima Capoor and Sumat Nanda were looking for a more sustainable wedding card. They wanted to avoid the typical "funky grand" wedding cards. Instead, they wanted something that could be enjoyed long after the wedding and would not end up in a landfill.
When they could not find anything, they decided to create their own, using seed paper — basic vegetable seeds embedded in handmade paper made from upcycled cotton scrap.
When the wedding guests started sharing the photos of the plants sprouting from their invitations, the couple knew that they were onto something. In 2018, they started Plantables with their first product, a plantable desk calendar.
Today, it offers a wide range of products, including notebooks, carry bags, and postcards, all of which are made from materials that grow into plants. To make these products, Plantables works with women from economically challenged backgrounds.
It was the first brand in India to introduce the concept of Plantable Rakhi (a Hindu Festival) in 2019. It also worked with brands like Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay during their India concert and made plantable guitar picks, made from basil seed embedded in upcycled cotton scrap paper and plantable tags, making sure every product creates a new life!
⌛ Time for the quiz of the week
Note: Answer at the end of the newsletter. No one (including me) can see your response, so feel free to vote. 😉
✨ Startup of the Week: Roha Biotech
Bubble wraps and packaging foams take centuries to decompose. So this Indian startup is building a sustainable alternative to them using mushrooms…
Pick up any online order that you get. You’ll mostly find plastic packaging in that — sometimes in the form of bubble wrap or maybe some kind of foam.
Even if you dispose of them correctly, they will mostly end up in landfills or will be incinerated.
Roha Biotech is solving this problem. It uses mycelium, aka mushroom roots. They’re sustainable, functional, and readily biodegradable. It then mixes it with agricultural residue, and the result is Mycelium Packaging, which is:
✅ 100% biodegradable.
✅ Plastic-free, chemical-free, and purely natural.
✅ Industrially durable and protective.
It can be used in a range of industries, from personal care to electronics. Unlike plastic, this goes back to nature, leaving behind no trace.
✅ 5 Sustainable Brands That I Recently Discovered
🇦🇺 RecycleSmart: Recycles hard-to-recycle stuff for individuals and businesses.
🇬🇧 AUAR: A complete construction platform for sustainable, high-quality housing.
🇮🇳 Ecoyaan: A sustainable marketplace that uses AI to verify product sustainability claims.
🇬🇧 Buy Me Once: A platform where you’ll only find long-lasting products.
🇨🇭 Bloom Biorenewables: Converts biopolymers like cellulose & lignin into added-value chemical products.
😹 3 Stories That Lifted My Spirits This Week
Timber Trouble: Two men in Himachal Pradesh, India, faced hefty fines after locals recorded them illegally cutting down trees in the village forest and exposed their chainsaw operation on social media.
Goodbye Gas: Vietnam will ban gasoline motorcycles in downtown Hanoi starting July 1, 2026, followed by a gradual expansion to include cars and other districts, as part of an emissions reduction initiative.
Climate Crackdown: In a groundbreaking advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice declared climate change an "existential threat," ruling that countries must meet their climate obligations.
Give that 💚 a little tap if this edition helped you learn something new about sustainability and climate change. Have a good weekend. Taking a break from work next week, so I will see you the week after :)