The Better India
In a sunlit corner of her Bengaluru home, 15-year-old Manya Harsha sits bent over a sieve, her hands steady as she presses onion peels into textured sheets of handmade paper. The air carries an earthy smell. Around her are no machines or polished tools, only water, pulp, patience, and a determination that seems far bigger than her years. Each attempt takes time. Each sheet asks for care. Yet Manya stays with the process, shaping waste into something useful with the same belief that guides much of her life: almost nothing needs to be thrown away too soon. For Manya, sustainability has never been an abstract lesson from a school textbook. It has always felt close, lived, and familiar. It is the way she sees the world, the way she has grown up, and the value she carries into everything she creates. Manya is a writer, poet, climate advocate, and founder of Grandma’s Green Weave , a youth-led initiative that upcycles discarded sarees and textiles into reusable cloth bags, reducing single-use plastic and reviving older sustainable practices. She has been speaking up for the planet since she was eight. “For me, sustainability is not something new; it is something I saw at home. I just chose to continue it,” she tells The Better India . ‘My grandma’s stories made me love nature’ Manya’s journey began at home with her maternal grandmother, V Rudramma. “My grandmother used to tell me stories about her childhood — how they planted saplings, nurtured them, collected flowers and spent time in nature,” Manya recalls. “I saw her recycle old fabrics into cloth bags that she carried to the market. That stayed with me.” Her mother, Chitrashee, traces that influence back to her own mother. “If there is one person behind Manya’s love for nature and writing, it is my mother,” she shares. “The older generation lived sustainably without calling it sustainability. They just lived that way.” For Manya, sustainability was part of daily life long before it became a larger conversation. From forests to farmlands, her childhood travels across India became a living classroom that shaped her understanding of the environment. Her parents, Harsha BS and Chitrashee Harsha, nurtured her love for nature by travelling extensively across India from the time she was just six months old. Unlike conventional family trips to commercial cities, they intentionally explored villages, forests, farms, and ecological regions. “We have covered almost the entire country by road,” Harsha shares. “She saw how farmers work in the hot sun, how forests are cut to build cities, and how ecosystems function. That practical exposure shaped her understanding.” Those journeys became her first classroom. A lake and a reserve forest formed the backdrop of Manya’s childhood. Time spent around them made nature feel close, familiar, and worth protecting. Through plantation drives, birdwatching, and conservation activities, she began to understand early that care for the environment starts with small, seemingly ordinary steps. That instinct showed up at eight when she organised a ‘water walkathon’ [awareness march] with friends and families from her apartment. Together, they marched, planted saplings, and pledged to protect the Earth . Before the data, there were poems Long before she understood climate terminology, Manya understood emotion and expressed it through her writing. “I started writing small poems when I was four. During school, whenever I got some time, I would write about birds, trees, buildings, anything around me.” Then, one of her teachers noticed this inclination and encouraged her parents to publish her work. In 2019, at just eight years old, she released her first poetry collection, Nature Our Future . But writing, for Manya, has always been a way to simply connect with people. “Stories connect personally,” she explains. “I cannot explain global warming to children using definitions. But I can tell them a story about animals or children taking action. Then they relate.” So, she chose stories over jargon, and participation over fear. When mourning turned into a movement In November 2023, after her grandmother passed away, Manya was left with a deeply personal question: how do you hold on to memory? Her answer was not to store it away. So, she chose to keep them in use. “We converted her old sarees into cloth bags and distributed them,” she says. “That is how Grandma’s Green Weave started.” The idea was simple. Old sarees and bedspreads were turned into cloth bags that people could use every day. For Manya, it felt like continuing something her grandmother had already been doing. What started with a few sarees at home has grown into a community movement, stitching together sustainability and remembrance. Her grandmother had stitched her own fabric bags and carried them to the market long before sustainability became a global conversation . “I saw her recycle old fabrics into cloth bags that she carried to the market. That stayed with me.” What began with a few sarees at home soon moved beyond it. In apartments across Bengaluru, people began to open their cupboards to bring out the sarees and bedspreads that had been lying unused. Through door-to-door collections and community bins, the fabric started coming in, piece by piece, ready to be stitched again. As the effort grew, it began to take a clearer shape. The model now rests on three pillars: Collection — Gathering used sarees and bedspreads from residential communities. Upcycling — Working with local tailors to stitch them into sturdy cloth bags. Education — Starting conversations about plastic pollution and mindful consumption. Weaving impact beyond numbers So far, Grandma’s Green Weave has collected over 2,200 sarees and 230 bedspreads, and turned them into more than 28,000 cloth bags. In the process, Manya and her team have diverted nearly 1.2 tonnes of textile waste and helped avoid an estimated 2,45,000 plastic bags. Today, these bags reach street vendors, schools, and community groups across Bengaluru. For Manya, sustainability is not an idea, it is a way of life, shaped by memory, curiosity, and care for the planet. Yet, behind those numbers sits the stubborn commitment of a 15-year-old. That commitment also shows in how the initiative has been sustained over time. Spread across nearly three years, the total project cost is estimated at around Rs 1.4–1.6 lakh, covering the production of over 22,000 bags to date. About 50% has come from Manya’s award money, including cash prizes from several international recognitions, while 10% has been drawn from her personal savings. The remaining amount has been contributed by her parents, largely towards paying tailors in small instalments over time. The initiative has not accepted any external donations and continues to be driven by individual effort and intent, with expenses managed as production needs arise. “Once money enters as donation, it changes the intent,” Chitrashee explains. “We wanted this to remain a movement, not a business.” The work has come with its own set of challenges. The cost of stitching each bag has gone up from Rs 7–9 in 2023 to Rs 20 in 2026. When tailors change, timelines shift, and busy seasons often slow the process down. The stitching job that changed a life Even with these changes, the people involved have stayed closely connected to the work. For Sayta Arjun, one of the tailors who has worked with the campaign over time, this has been more than just another assignment. It has changed how she sees her work. “I feel very happy that I can help in this campaign.” For her, old sarees now carry a different meaning. Earlier, they were often simply given away. Now, she sees what they can become. “After seeing this project, even I felt that I could reuse my old sarees and make them into cloth bags.” While Sayta charges approximately Rs 20 per bag, the motivation, she says, goes beyond income. “I have not looked at this project financially, but I am grateful to be a part of this project.” For the tailors involved, each stitch is more than work, it is a chance to be part of something meaningful. For Manya, every discarded saree holds possibility. “A saree is not waste,” she says thoughtfully. “It can become curtains, bedspreads, pillow covers, bags. Such a beautiful fabric has many lives.” That way of looking at fabric also shapes what she hopes to build next. She wants to reach lakhs of vendors, reduce dependency on plastic carry bags, and make carrying your own bag a natural choice. “When you carry an eco bag, you feel proud. You feel like you are part of change.” And in that pride lies the quiet power of Grandma’s Green Weave — a movement stitched with memory, responsibility, and love. Turning onion peels into paper sheets The same instinct that led Manya to work with old sarees shows up in other parts of her life too. She often finds herself looking at everyday waste and wondering what else it can become. If Grandma’s Green Weave grew from remembrance, her vegetable peel paper began with curiosity. “I started experimenting with vegetable paper when I saw my mother peeling onions. The peels already looked like paper, so I wondered if I could turn them into it.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by THE PAPER POWER ROJECT (@the_paper_power) But, like most new ideas, the first few attempts failed. “I wouldn’t say I perfected it,” she says. “Perfection is a long way to go. But I think I have created something very close to regular, virgin paper. It can be written on, folded, crafted with. I have papers from 2020, and they are in perfect condition even now.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by THE PAPER POWER ROJECT (@the_paper_power) What began with onion peels soon expanded into a wider exploration of kitchen waste. During the 2020 lockdown, Manya began working with materials like carrot peels, garlic husks, corn cobs, pea shells, coconut husks, coriander stems, grass clippings, peanut shells, and citrus rinds, turning them into usable sheets of paper. She also experimented with denim scraps, continuing to test how far everyday waste could go when reworked with care. View this post on Instagram A post shared by THE PAPER POWER ROJECT (@the_paper_power) Her mother recalls how simply the idea began. “It started when she saw me peeling onions and felt the peels looked like paper. She wanted to try turning them into something usable. Later, people approached her with business ideas, but we chose to let it remain a DIY project so people could learn and do it at home.” Taking sustainability into classrooms Taking her love for sustainability beyond her corner of the world, Manya now conducts back-to-school workshops in Bengaluru, where she teaches children to make seed pencils and newspaper pens. “When you’re writing with a pencil which has seeds, you wait for the time when the pencil gets over, and you’re ready to plant the seed,” she says. “It’s a happy moment when you plant it, water it daily, watch it grow and give fruits or flowers. It’s a huge journey which they will remember for the rest of their lives.” Through hands-on workshops, she is planting seeds of sustainability in young minds, one pencil, one habit at a time. Alongside her work on sustainability, writing has remained a constant in Manya’s life. She is the author of nine nature-themed books and the editor of Sunshine Fortnightly , an environment-focused magazine she created to bring conversations on climate action, biodiversity, and sustainable living to young readers in schools and libraries. Her parents have watched this journey take shape from the beginning. Her father fondly recalls, “A teacher told us she has the potential to reach the masses through her words. After her first book was published in 2019, there was no turning back.” Her mother adds, “Children should grow up in an environmentally friendly space and learn through practical experiences.” Manya looks forward to continuing her effort with sparkles in her eyes. “We children are the citizens of tomorrow. If we decide to build a sustainable future for ourselves, we can bring change through our words and actions. Climate education at the grassroots level is the seed that will bring a huge forest of change in the future,” she says. And perhaps that is what her journey brings into focus. Change does not always begin in boardrooms or policies. Sometimes, it begins at home, with a grandmother’s saree. All images courtesy Manya Harsha
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