the long answer
Updated 15 February 2026. The numbers below are from the studio's own logs, not estimates.
Most “eco” stationery is a recycled-paper insert inside a plastic sleeve shipped in a polymailer. We wanted to do better, and to tell you exactly how. This page is our public ledger.
the materials
We buy 120 gsm and 180 gsm post-consumer recycled cartridge from a Sivakasi mill, and 200 gsm khadi from a women-run cooperative in Puducherry. Each ream we receive carries a batch card noting pulp-source and whiteness. Virgin pulp has not entered the studio since October 2023.
92%
Recycled or khadi by weight across all finished books.
8 cm
Off-cuts under become kit practice sheets; above become endpapers.
< 400 g
Of paper goes to landfill each month.
Our cloth covers come from two Bengaluru tailors who set aside denim off-cuts and khadi trimmings for us at the end of each week. In 2025 we bound 812 books using roughly 46 square metres of fabric that would otherwise have been burnt or sent to textile landfill.
Cloth covers are dyed in small 8-litre batches using madder, indigo, pomegranate rind, and onion-skin mordants. Edges are stamped with plant-based letterpress ink from a Chennai printmaker — no petroleum binders. Spent dye baths are neutralised and used as garden water.
A single A5 Coptic journal from our studio carries an estimated 280 g CO₂e — the paper being the dominant share at 64%, shipping next at 28%, and studio electricity the remainder. We offset domestic shipments at 1.2 kg CO₂e per parcel through a verified mangrove-restoration partner in the Sundarbans.
