Small Village Makes Bamboo Straws for India’s Mega Cities

Villagers in Baga Dima, India, are helping curb the plastic pollution crisis using their skills in manufacturing bamboo items, providing highly sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic – and paper – straws.

The indigenous Dimasa people aren’t familiar with why people enjoy drinking from straws, as they have never done so themselves. But given the major demand in Indian megacities such as Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai, village leader Robin Naiding was inspired to play his part in restricting the use of highly-polluting plastic straws.

“A businessman from Kolkata came here last year and asked us to make bamboo straws,” says Naiding, pioneer along with his family in the new eco-friendly industry in the state of Assam. “He said big people in the hotels don’t like drinking from plastic anymore. They want to drink from bamboo because it’s the original plastic. They also told me plastic spoils people’s health.”

“Bamboo straws have not only proved to be an effective replacement over plastic and paper straws for our clients but are also better economically, environmentally, functionally, and aesthetically,” adds Ravi Kiran, co-founder of Bambugo, a start-up partnering with Assam villagers to harvest and transform bamboo into drinking straws that can be reused up to a hundred times.