Growing up in Delhi, Siddharth A K yearned to return to his hometown in Thiruvananthapuram. What drove him more to visit Kerala were its serene beaches. For him, summer vacations meant soaking in the tranquil beauty of coconut palms lining the shore.

Often, his mother would take him to beaches for cleanup drives – a memory he has treasured for a long time. This habit became so ingrained in him that even after his mother’s early death, he continued visiting beaches to pick up plastic litter.

“My mother and I would clean the beach every summer vacation during our visits to Kerala. This tradition continued until my final year in college when my mother passed away due to illness. I cremated her near Shanghumugham Beach, a place that held so many memories for us. Sitting there afterwards, I felt an overwhelming sadness. To channel my grief, I began cleaning the beach weekly,” Siddharth shares in a conversation with The Better India.

One day, during one of these cleanups, he returned to the same beach the very next day and found it full of trash again. “It then became clear that cleaning alone wasn’t enough — there needed to be accountability and proper recycling,” he adds.

Kerala generates about 450 tonnes of plastic daily, with around 70 percent ending in the sea. Marine littering and plastic pollution continue to plague the state’s 590-kilometre coastline.

Siddharth wanted to come up with sustainable solutions to address the growing menace. Returning to Delhi, he visited polymer research-based institutions to study plastic waste and its potential reuse. That’s when it struck him — what if this waste could be turned into something useful? Inspired by this thought, he decided to transform plastic waste into utility items like........

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