WorkshopQ: Redefining the sustainable narrative with aesthetics

Note to Readers: Moneycontrol, India’s leading financial news digital platform and CommsCredible, an integrated communications consultancy, have come together to partner with Grant Thornton Bharat, one of the largest fully integrated Assurance, Tax & Advisory firms in India, to launch Faces of Vibrant Bharat (FoVB), an initiative that tells stories of organisations making an impact on India's social fabric with their work at the grassroot level.

During visits to her family’s manufacturing unit and other factories, Madhvi Khaitan Pittie often came across large mounds of industrial waste. Even before fully understanding the outcome, she had the vision to transform the waste into something meaningful. Pittie and her sister started WorkshopQ in 2010 in Jaipur and re-established it in Mumbai in 2016.

Inspired by functionality, innovation and fuelled by a deep desire to be green, WorkshopQ, a social enterprise employs local artisans to salvage industrial waste and turn them into purposeful art installations or meticulously designed home décor products.

"Our mission is to reduce waste by employing innovative methods. Upcycle pre-industrial, post-industrial and consumer waste into something that would look right at home on your desk or your coffee table. We endeavour to start conversations around the nexus between aesthetic and environmental sustainability," explains Pittie, who scrupulously designs her products to give them a contemporary look.

Besides home décor products, WorkshopQ has completed over 60 installation projects for brands including Raymonds, Bisleri, Ford, Ashok Leyland, Indian Oil Corporation, GVK, among others. "With a lot of companies adopting the EPR policy (Extended Producer's Responsibility), upscaling their industrial waste enables them to manage the pre-consumer and post-consumer waste and to promote employee engagement and support their recycling goals," adds Pittie.

Through projects such as 'Automatic Ganpati' for Ford, a 13-foot-tall Bumblebee Transformer for Ashok Leyland and a chair installation for a private collector, WorkshopQ has managed to recycle around 4,500 kgs of car, truck and bike spare parts. "These parts would have otherwise ended up in a landfill or remained unused in storage for the next couple of 100 years," she says.

In their eight-year journey, the company has supported over 70 artists. This was possible as individuals and companies are increasingly becoming aware and are adopting sustainability as their business ethos. The enterprise is looking to expand into the e-commerce space with a more direct-to-customer model and a bigger business-to-business segment of smaller products.

WorkshopQ intends to grow its art installation segment and collaborate with the civic bodies of each city. "We want to further market our products correctly, list them at the right places, innovate at every junction, explore new avenues and materials to upcycle and fuse these into public art to make our urban landscape beautiful and sustainable," Pittie says.

A firm believer of success speaks for hard work, Pittie believes, "One must have conviction in their vision. But humility is equally important. I have found that identifying a mistake and correcting it in time has never harmed me or my self-belief."

What made Pittie a Face of Vibrant Bharat?
“The latest UN projections predict the world population to be around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050. The need of the hour therefore is sustainable consumption and production. By efficiently using resources and looking at economic growth from an environmental perspective, WorkshopQ is redefining the sustainable narrative, where it is no longer a term but an experience that the end consumer reminisces and acts upon,” says Ravinder Reddy, Partner, Grant Thornton Bharat.

"Workshop Q is one of those rare gems that's using the power of aesthetical sustainability to transform India's mounting industrial waste into meaningful resources. By creatively converting factories’ waste into pieces of art and products of daily use, WorkshopQ sends out a very important message to the businesses and people in our society -- Want Not, Waste Not," said Aman Dhall, Founder of CommsCredible