Forest Green

Ensures fair living wage for producers

Discloses the community being impacted

Reduces the environmental impact

Focusses on women producers

Created using handcrafted methods

Reduces/Reuses/
Recycles resources

Made out of responsible materials

Avoids use of chemicals or toxic materials

Uses portion of proceeds to give back to the community

Incubated by Industree Crafts Foundation in 2021, Forest Green is enabling an inclusive ecosystem to facilitate socio-economic opportunities and building sustainable livelihoods for women and youth in forest fringe areas of Odisha.

Purpose

Forest Green has the potential to enable women with opportunities to leverage forest-based enterprises, providing continuity in work and decent incomes, and build their socio-economic cohesion while enabling them to preserve their prevailing culture. Theory of Change focuses on the key strategy that transforms women's green resources and skills into a higher value product, such as a globally compliant buffet plate. The higher-value plates have the potential to fetch a 10X price of 10 cents with customers across India and can be supplied globally at these prices. Through the intervention of improved production methods, and infrastructure, Women earn an average of INR 5000 per month in pressing, INR 5000 for stitching, and INR 2000 for leaf collections annually in disposable plate value chains. This income would double with incomes from other forest products.

People

Forest Green creates socio-economic impact such as increased incomes, entrepreneurial opportunities, upskilling through livelihood skills, gender empowerment, agency, and ownership. Developing cultural and traditional skills along with modern skills is a holistic approach to running an enterprise. The brand has mobilized thousands of women from rural, tribal, and underprivileged communities from Odisha, such as women of Khonds, Kui, Dharua, Bhumia, Gadaba, Paraja tribes to build their skills and capacity to enable them to become entrepreneurs and manage self-owned enterprises. Further, the eco-friendly, biodegradable tableware is then dispatched to buyers in the local and national markets, to be used at the community gathering such as weddings, or restaurants.

Planet

The climate-driven impact under Forest Green has significantly supported natural and eco-friendly based products, with women driving the climate actions and conserving the environment at the grassroots level. For the utilization of sal/ siali leaves in the Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) leaf plate value chain, the enterprise do not harvest sal leaves from the sal tree but utilizes the fallen leaves from the tree, which is forest litter. Women here are taught skillful ways of sourcing and manufacturing products, thus saving a lot of carbon footprint. The sal and siali plates and bowls, for example, which are made by the tribal women of Odisha aim to replace plastic. There is scope for these products to be taken to the international markets as well, especially since communities across the globe are looking for sustainable solutions that can substitute single-use plastic.