Few ‘Indian’ takers for Pollachi woman’s eco-friendly coconut shell products

At a time when the clarion call for saving the environment has been making a lot of noise worldwide, a Pollachi entrepreneur’s artistic initiative of turning coconut shells, that usually end up as trash, into utility items, has been drawing worldwide attention.

The 29-year-old Radha Lakshmi is turning trash into treasure with coconut shells to create items like tea cups, wine cups, ice cream cups, soap box, spoons, soup bowl and candle holder.

Her innovative products, crafted at a small workshop in Arasampalayam ‘pirivu’, a rather nondescript village near Kinathukadavu has found its market place in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Russia, USA and other countries.

“I first began making eco-friendly products from coconut shells to provide alternatives to plastic. It was definitely not a cakewalk as it took me two years to learn the craft on my own through trial and error,” Radha said.

Initially, she took painstaking efforts to reach out to shops, hotels and commercial establishments to sell off her range of coconut shell products, but was met with a rather poor response. “I even gave my products for free in shops looking for orders based on demand. Yet, there was no response and I began to mull over switching to some other work. It was then that I decided to think about exporting and posted my products online by creating a website,” she said.

Within a few days, she received orders for 10,000 pieces from Japan. “Till then, I was struggling to sell every single piece of my crafted coconut shell in the local market. It was a bulk order and I was extremely happy to have delivered it to them on time,” she said.

Since then, there has been no looking back as her clientele base has grown manifold with a steady stream of orders, coming from about 20 foreign customers. With her business picking pace, Radha has now become a small scale entrepreneur employing four women in her modest unit equipped with machineries. To ensure perfection, she picks each and every coconut by herself directly from farms. “I buy coconuts in bulk from farms once in a month. While the shells are removed for making artefacts, the coconut flesh is used to make oil and even its fibre doesn’t go waste,” she said.

Radha now plans to develop her unit into an MNC-like firm and provide employment to hundreds of people in near future. Her husband is employed in a private firm and they have two girls.

“Though foreigners are environmentally conscious and show a liking for our products, I have a desire to see our people also use them. The government should at least take the lead by using these items,” she said.