Our Journey to becoming Zero Waste started at the very inception of SAGE. As a small venture, we were very mindful about ensuring that we were taking on change that we could sustain in the long run. The first move made, when Hyderabad Goes Green was rebranded as SAGE in 2016, was to remove single use plastic bags. As we were starting our journey as producers around the same time, we wanted the love, affection and effort put into growing the vegetables to be reflected through delivery as well. And so came the reusable crates, where vegetables could be segregated, and kept their integrity much better. But our real efforts to intensify our move, started in 2018 with the removal of plastic packaging from all kitchen products. The next step was do eradicate plastic straws. We started working with papaya straws and today the kitchen serves re-usable steel straws.The toughest transition we made was shifting delivery of milk from plastic packets to glass bottles. This was one transition where having the support of our customer base was very critical and we are delighted that a year on, collecting milk in glass bottles has become a complete non-issue.

We then capped of the year with the most dramatic transition ever. As we moved to our new location at the end of 2018, we chose to completely eradicate plastic packaging. We worked with our vendors to supply products in bulk and dramatically cut down our waste foot print from the store. With all our composting and recycling efforts, we are delighted to say that we are now a Zero-Waste to landfill store and café. There are many more mountains we want to climb however, and look forward to the journey ahead.