BUNKO JUNKO

BUNKO JUNKO is devoted to caring for people and the environment. We bring upcycled fashion and lifestyle products made by women and youth from marginalized communities in India to global buyers. To date, we have supported over 3,000 women workers and kept approx.   368 matric tonnes of textile waste out of landfills, save 270 billion gallons of water, 2970 matric tons of co2 emissions. We aspire to create an ecosystem of community empowerment through skilling and promoting a culture of entrepreneurship. These empowered women bring prosperity to the entire family and raise the next powerful generation of girls.

The problem we are trying to solve

The textile industry is the world’s second-largest polluter where millions of tones of textile scrap go into the landfill every day. According to Green Peace, global clothing production doubled from 2000-2014; the average person buys 60% more items of clothing every year and keeps them for about half as long as fifteen years ago. Manufacturers and designers in the mainstream fashion industry discard on average 15% of materials en route to production (60 bn meters of fabric), the majority of which ends up in landfills. While upcycling and recycling are both highly labor-intensive and tedious, they reduce the resources needed to make fresh fabric and the fabric waste in our landfills which sits there to release harmful gases back into our environment.

On the other hand, underprivileged women and youth from rural or semi-rural areas face an acute lack of gainful employment opportunities locally. Many of our artisans come from Karjat and neighboring villages, which are located 60 km outside Mumbai, Maharashtra. These villages are home to tribal communities that have faced social and economic marginalization historically. Agricultural activity remains minimal and youth in the area are mostly employed as daily wage workers. In this scenario, skilling and sustainable income generation for women and youth have become the centerpiece of our work.

Our Solution

BUNKO JUNKO as a label is a blend of sustainable and innovative design. ‘Bunko’ means art decoration creation in Japanese and ‘junko’ means junk. We design, deconstruct and develop chic garments, accessories, stationery, toys, etc. using industrial waste, dead stocks, and sustainable materials. We adopt this thinking in our design process- where clothes are comfortable and utilitarian, made up with upcycled as well as in our production process where we work on a zero-waste policy. Everything from post-production is put back into use through various kinds of patchwork, knitting of back fabrics, making accessories or paper, etc. The outcome is beautiful products where each one has its own story and no two products are the same!

Our Covid-19 response

The pandemic caused massive disruptions to the livelihoods of the underprivileged in villages near Karjat, Maharasthra. During the lockdown, we started supplying ration kits containing rice, wheat, pulses, oil, salt, turmeric, and biscuits to ensure that our workers’ families could eat at least two meals a day. We also launched a new line of personal protective gear including face masks to generate work amidst a demand slowdown and respond to market needs.