A super neat idea, they manufacture and sell ‘plantable paper’ to brands. Looks and functions like regular paper but grows into a plant when tossed in a pot of soil, wow is all that we wanted to say!

It all started when one young lady from Jaipur, Kritika Parwal was studying in the U.S. and had to think of an out-of-the-box marketing solution for one her classes. She came up with an interesting idea – to create a paper that could be planted. Skeptical about her own idea, Kritika didn’t know that it would one day become a successful project. She started a company called Tomato & Co. that designs a paper which can grow into beautiful saplings.

“We noticed that people threw around a lot of paper, but was there a way to marry that with our vision of more green? This got us thinking, as we rattled our brains away for finding a ‘different’ solution to an old problem – plants were too few and trash was too much! And voila, here we are. After reiterating numerously on each of the 9 painstaking stages of the process… with PLANTABLE PAPER,” says the proud entrepreneur-Kritika Parwar.

Plantable paper is a unique paper concocted from organic pulp from wastage and seeds. It looks and functions just like regular paper, can be sheared, shaped, printed or written upon, but toss it into a pot of soil and water it, a plant grows out of it. Magic, isn’t it?

A texture so artsy, a vision so noble, a character of its own, the future sown, that’s our paper! “A homogeneous pulp of cotton shreds, seeds, binders, and resins of required consistency is made and is flattened out on screens of a specific thickness using muslin membranes. After the paper is semi-dried, it is taken through a few processes to preserve the germination of the seeds used. The sheets are then air dried and shaped into the required products,” explains Kritika.

Some of the challenges, she explains, are avoiding chemicals that go into the binding process, procuring organic paper and finding an alternative to calendaring, as it tends to destroy seeds. For printing on the paper, organic and naturally existing pigments like indigo, cochineal, weld, and cutch are used.

The first seed paper contained tomato seeds. After this, Unilever placed an order for 3 lakh pieces. The team of Kritika has also been part of Kissan’s ad campaign where tomato seeds were distributed in Delhi and Mumbai through sachets stuck to the morning newspaper. “That’s when we realized that there’s a huge market for something like this. Imagine events that use a large amount of wristbands, nametags and other paper-based products that are only thrown out in the end. That’s where plantable paper comes in — these products can be recycled to grow into something useful,” Kritika says.

It has been over a year since Tomato & Co came into being and the company has made successful attempts in using the seeds of tomato, lavender, chillies, carrot, jasmine, basil, lemon mint, lettuce, marigold, sunflower, wheat, parsley, and orange to make plantable paper.

Anyone who interacts with Kritika is indeed impressed with her plantable paper. Naturally, most people do not take her seriously until they see, touch and ‘grow’ the paper.

Raghav Sharma is one such person who has firsthand experience of planting the paper and seeing it germinate. In his words, “When I first heard about Tomato & Co, I could not believe that such paper could exist. Being a resident of Jaipur, it was not hard for me to visit Kritika and learn more from her. I picked up the paper from her and once home, I followed the instructions given by her. I planted the paper in a flowering pot and would water it every day. Finally, after around 11 or 12 weeks, little sprouts were seen shooting out of the mud…..well, the seeds did germinate in my very own back yard!”

She admits that they are little expensive adding that they are a double bottom line organization who looks at profit and also at the number of seeds that are sown. Apart from calendars, wedding invites, post cards, coffee cup sleeves, bookmarks, coasters and more, Tomato & Co also plans to sell greeting cards soon.