Let’s introduce you to Thaely, a brand converting waste plastic bags and bottles into your daily wear sneakers. Meet 23-year-old Ashay Bhave who transitioned his ‘just a design idea’ into a business model and has recycled 50,000 plastic bags and 35,000 plastic bottles since July 2021.
Named after the Hindi term for a plastic bag to draw the audience’s attention to the mounting plastic pollution, Thaely is a sustainable sneaker brand that makes shoes from discarded plastic. And you’d be surprised to know that its brainchild is a 23-year-old, Ashay Bhave.
Ashay moved to Dubai three years ago and is a recipient of the Eureka Startup Award at Amity University. The young designer said the idea for 'Thaely' was born out of necessity and the desire to create something unique.
"I started working on the idea at the end of 2017. As part of my design portfolio, I was looking to create footwear that is cost-effective and safe for the environment. I needed to come up with something that uses recycled plastic without creating any more plastic waste," said Ashay.
He said: "I was in India for vacation,
and got a prototype made using this material. I provided the material to a
cobbler back home in Mumbai, and asked him to work on creating a shoe based on
the design I gave him in the summer of 2018.
"Each pair uses a total of 15 plastic bags and 22 bottles." Though Ashay did not reveal the process through which he derives the fabric from the shoes, he said: "The bags are sourced from scrap processing corporations and supermarkets."
Talking about the price of the sneakers, Ashay said: "It is not going to be too expensive. Somewhere around the same price as Nike or Adidas shoes." His work was most recently seen at Tashkeel studio at the Conscious Consumption Exhibition
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Currently, four variants of sneakers are available. Soon, Thaely products will be available in retail stores in Dubai and Europe. Though the product is made in India, it is not a big market for Thaely yet; the focus is majorly on Europe, Australia and America.
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