The Trays of Art
A CONVERSATION AT WSA GLOBAL CONGRESS 2025, HYDERABAD
Client
CDPP
Year
2025
Category
Conscious Gifting
Type of Work
Circular Design
Material Transformation
Corporate Gifting
In April 2025, we attended the WSA Global Congress hosted by the Digital Empowerment Foundation and the Government of Telangana at T-Hub Hyderabad,
an event that brought together the world's top 40 digital innovators and changemakers. Among the many conversations we had, one stayed with us. A team member from the Centre for Development Policy and Practice (CDPP) stopped to hear what we do. She listened carefully, said our work in circular design and material transformation was exactly the kind of thinking the world needs more of,
and told us she'd be in touch.
Six months later, CDPP needed 30 gift pieces for press delegates attending their Digital Citizen Summit 2025, themed People & Platforms: Let's Talk Accountability, held on 14–15 November 2025 at T-Hub, Hyderabad.
The summit explored how digital platforms shape power and public responsibility. They wanted the gifts to reflect that intention, thoughtful, purposeful, and worth keeping.
Each of the three options we proposed, the tray, the cup holder, and the coaster set, is made from plastic waste that once had no future. Alongside these, we shared reference photos of the transformation of plastic waste into wall art, framed in reclaimed pine wood. We included them only as a visual reference for material transformation. But to our surprise, they didn't want our proposals. They wanted the reference itself.
The pieces that caught their attention are made from carefully sorted plastic residue, discarded pharmaceutical bottles, shampoo caps, industrial drums, and milk crates. These aren't raw materials to us. They are our creative medium. At our factory, leftover fragments from making our main panels are arranged with deliberate artistic thought, melted into sheets where colour and texture flow in ways that can never be replicated. Each sheet is then cut and framed with reclaimed pine, varnished to draw out the wood grain, and finished as a functional tray that is also a piece of art. No two are the same. That is not a marketing claim; it is simply how the material works.
When the trays reached the CDPP team, they responded with the kind of enthusiasm that doesn't need much translation. Their joy was genuine, and it was exactly the response that reminds us why we do this work, not to talk about
sustainability, but to put it in someone's hands in a form they immediately love. Every piece that leaves our studio carries a quiet story: waste that found flow, and
design that found purpose.
Change is beautiful.
