Re-using waste materials is not something that we haven’t heard about, but a Delhi-based NGO participating in an upcoming show at the Nehru Centre in London, in June this year is definitely newsworthy.

Anita Ahuja - internationally acclaimed artist and award-winning designer, writer and the founder of the NGO Conserve India - has been exporting artwork for the past six to seven years. At one of her recently concluded exhibitions titled ‘At War with the Obvious’, at India International Centre, New Delhi, Ahuja had put together 30 paintings and multimedia artworks that attracted much admiration.

Alongside conventional acrylic on canvas paintings, the artworks speak volumes about present day society. There's ‘The Crazy Society’ made of leather scrap, jeans labels that shows how ‘God has become like a brand’.

Besides, Ahuja's forte is bags of every kind—day bags, evening bags and beach bags. Moreover, the products branded ‘Conserve HRP’ make their way to high-end retail shops in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia. With the help of 300 ragpickers from the city, the waste material is collected in Bahadurgarh in the NCR region, and then used for making products and artwork at the NGO. The enterprise trains 1,200 ragpickers so that they can get jobs in the factories that dot the industrial estate of Bahadurgarh, where Conserve India is located. They have been using waste materials such as plastic bags, tire tubes, bottles and their top caps to make installations and art works.