Freelance writer Aruna Chandrasekhar and her fiance Sriram Sharma, a contributor to the online tech portal technoholik.com, are in the middle of moving house. In between figuring out logistics, they have a few things to tick off their checklist - dealing with the sizeable 'junk' they have hoarded over the time spent in their Navi Mumbai flat and the idea of turning it into 'house-leaving' gifts for friends.
All that valuable raw material would anyway have been rehashed and redesigned into simple, interesting stuff for day-to day use: painted wine bottles, processor chip keyboards, printer-rod laptop rack, a keyboard acupressure pad, a hard disk block for a coaster, a belt with processor chip for a buckle, jewellery, or a chandelier. On the entrance to their house, you'd find a nameplate made of a stripped keyboard with rearranged black and white keys announcing the owners' names. Their washroom wall wears a hard drive platter that serves as a mirror for morning shaves. These alternate visualisations for parts, which were designed keeping another end-use in mind, go up on Sriram's website switchklick.com.
Most of the e-waste that works as fodder for the improvisations mostly comes form e-waste recyclers in Kurla. "We have this dark obsession with Kurla and the area around it," say Chandrasekhar, who after quitting her full-time job, has focused energies on making jewellery using e-waste, single earrings and precious metals. Since she is no designer by training, she is learning by doing; currently in the process of making and taking apart green plastic bottle bases that should eventually come together as a chandelier. "The point is to create value with waste. Everything has room for interpretation; things can be functional or decorative," she says. Only yesterday morning she managed to locate her stolen bike, which was in an unusable condition. The bike's air filter is now a lamp.
Right now their designs are basic and not commercially motivated. They are purely for the love of the idea called 'reuse'. "For now, we will make things and gift them to friends and see whether they are appreciated," says Chandrasekhar. Eventually, switchklick.com is intended to be a platform where like-minded people can link up and exchange discarded materials, and ideas. "There is no eco-friendly way to dispose e-waste, says Sriram, talking about the process of separating metal from e-waste using chemicals that pollute groundwater. He wants to promote e-waste as commodity. "My idea is to fossilise chips in acrylic or glass and make them into key chains and jewellery. My first-ever PC had an AMD Duron processor. That line died a long time ago. My father just gave the PC away. If the processor were cased and made into a key chain, it would have been the ultimate geek collectible," says Sharma.
Sharma is hugely inspired by The Whole Earth Catalog, the cult DIY publication of 70s that sourced ideas from all over America when there was no internet. "It was turning people into engineers, artists and designers, making them more independent. Now that the tools to link up are available, the website can be that meeting point where people can collaborate. The idea is to prevent people from running to a mall for every little thing," says Sharma.
The website is intended to be a platform where like-minded people can link up and exchange discarded materials, and ideas
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