Mapani - Paakshantar

Paakshantar through its brand Mapani is trying to reduce the flow of harmful chemicals reaching water bodies. It offers herbal and natural alternative Read mores to cosmetic and home cleaning products to achieve its aim. It aims to change people’s views towards water and encourages starting this journey by using natural home care products. It wants to replace the usually conveniently available soaps, shampoos and home cleaners with ingredients found in nature and home kitchens. Its philosophy reads as For Water – For Earth – For Skin and believes that skin care can be achieved through 100% natural means. The organisation concentrates on local skin care recipes handed down through generations and employs women to hand craft its products. It maintains an online website to sell and market its natural products and claims that their products are so safe that they can be consumed without harm. It procures raw materials from local farmers and shops and local women are provided livelihood to process these raw materials, from drying in the sun, hand pounding the materials and packaging them into glass bottles, paper bags and cloth pouches. All operations are kept in line with the theme of conservation of the environment. The products Paakshantar offers mix in water for use but do not dissolve in it, thus the water can be directed to fields in villages or used to water plants in the urban cities, Even if the water does seep through the ground it does not pollute or damage the environment. It conducts sessions for interested people to learn making skin care, hair care, oral care at home itself with ingredients sourced from the kitchen besides offering holi kits make from natural materials. The organisation is looking out to finding ways to further reduce its carbon footprint from its operations of manufacturing bottles, boxes, sieves and the pollution caused by vehicles transporting them.