Pepaa (formerly Plantcil) is an award-winning social enterprise that develops sustainable stationery and packaging solutions for brands from 100% landfill-bound waste.

The Humble Plantable Seed Paper Pencil

Do you know that for making every Sunday edition of a newspaper, 75000 trees need to be cut? We didn’t know that too, until a year ago.

But once we learnt this shocking fact, we, at Indian Superheroes, a social enterprise (founded by Divya Shetty and Vishnu Vardhaan) working with over 800 organic farmers, wanted to do something about it. Which is why we started Pepaa (formerly Plantcil) – to make 100% recycled and handmade paper from discarded newspapers, cotton shreds and other post-consumer landfill waste. 

Pepaa (pronounced Paepaa) is paper in multiple languages and also a colloquial reference to kabadiwallahs who cycle through the glut of city lanes, calling out “Pepaa, Pepaa…”. Ah, those times!

[Read: Why did we rebrand from Plantcil to Pepaa?]

From Pencils to Plantable Seed Paper Products

From our responsible paper, we started making pencils, pens (everything non-plastic sans the refill), coasters, notebooks, bookmarks, cloth tags, and even event invitation cards (Do download our product brochure for the complete list!).

The best part - each of our stationery is plantable – that’s right, it will sprout into flowers and vegetables and even trees after you use it! It’s our tiny effort to close the loop of sustainability - to enable stationery to be zero waste like never before.

Seed Paper Calendars, Wristbands, Newspapers and More

Some of our claims to fame include being able to make sustainable stationery from cow dung, elephant dung, rhino dung and even shredded currency notes! We also launched India’s 1st plantable newspaper on World Environment Day. Oh yes, a newspaper that you can read and plant after use! 

Amongst other things, we export recycled paper pencils and pens to over 8 countries, made plantable Rakhis for Raksha Bandhan, plantable wristbands for hundreds of marathons, plantable, handmade carry bags for a plethora of events, visiting cards, political pamphlets, Republic Day flags, hang tags for clothing brands, plantable packaging for diapers and takeaway food, and even Plantable Calendars for New Year! We also host zero waste, sustainable events for brands and weddings on demand.

And hey, we are South India’s only stationery company that is EN-713 Certified (Safety Standards of Europe) and Sedex Certified (Ethical Company). Everything from the food-grade, non-toxic colors we procure from our farmers (to make colorful pencils), natural glue we apply (for pencils, pens and notebooks), to natural inks we use for printing (on plantable seed paper) is all chosen with deep research and immense care for the environment.

At Pepaa, our intention is to make sustainability accessible to all. To become zero waste, to be environmentally conscious, we need to start from implementing changes in our lifestyle – and what best than to make a tiny change in procuring stationery?

By procuring our products, you are not just making your company sustainable, you are helping us empower 800+ organic farmers and hundreds of rural women (we call them homepreneurs) from rural South India as part of our Village Empowerment Initiative. Every sustainable, plantable stationery you procure, will, in essence, enable the homepreneurs and farmers to self-sustain their livelihood, and bloom, just like our seeds will. 

[Behind The Scenes: See the Entire Team behind Pepaa]

The journey of sustainability is a thousand miles - thank you for taking your first step with Pepaa’s sustainable stationery and packaging.