What do you do with that pair of old jeans lying in your cupboard? Or the empty bottles gathering in your balcony? How about the newspapers you’ve been meaning to sell off? A clutch of youngsters from the city is recycling everything from scrap leather to buttons from old clothes to make a variety of products. Green deed done, profit made!

What started as a hobby turned into a passion and an occupation for Div Harlalka and Prateek Kayan, who retail T-shirts with funky designs, dressing them up with bits of old clothes, even buttons.

“The idea is to bring new products into the market and if we can recycle used material, what could be better? Div and I started Chaotic Ink this year after we met at a GMAT coaching class,” says Prateek Kayan, 24, a resident of New Alipore who quit his banking job in New York to concentrate on the venture. Div, who is studying business in the US, has taken a year off to work on Chaotic Ink.

Div and Prateek are not alone. Paramita Bhattacharya, a 28-year-old HR lecturer moonlights as a designer and retailer of recycled accessories like bags and handmade jewellery under the brand Swaraa.

“We make quirky items like handmade jewellery, purses and funky bags using old buttons, lace, beads or multi-colour cloth strips. Our products cater to youngsters as well as adults,” said Paramita, who floated the project in 2010 along with friend Nivedita Nandy, 29, a consultant with a telecom company.

For 25-year-old Abhishek Tripathy and his friends Aamir Jafri and Ankit Verma, nothing is beyond recycling. “We use old posters and banners made of nylon and plastic and convert them into sling bags. We also use scrap leather thrown out by factories to make wallets, key rings and cardholders,” said Abhishek, a resident of Ruby Park. He’s the brain behind Jobless Freak and in charge of product designing at the three-year-old venture.

Ankit, 25, works with a Calcutta-based export house and takes care of production and distribution while Aamir, also 25, a merchandiser in a Noida-based export house, helps source the raw material.

“Jobless Freak resulted out of a bad day in college when our morale was down as there were no jobs, no placements. This company shows that there is no dearth of work and being jobless isn’t a crime. One of our T-shirts explains this concept with the line: ‘It is someone’s job to cut a tree, but one does not need a job to plant a tree’,” said 26-year-old Abhishek, who also works with a private firm as accessories designer.

Sahana Singh gave up a 10-year career in advertising to set up Home is Where the Heart Is, which specialises in customised home décor items. “I started recycling old bottles for my own home. My friends and family loved them and I was flooded with requests. That’s how the idea of outsourcing hit me. Now I courier across the country,” said Sahana, a St. Xavier’s College graduate who married into Mumbai.

Out-of-the-box designs and affordable prices have made these brands specialising in recycled products so popular that their makers are flooded with orders from across the country and even abroad.

“I love shopping and keep checking out their pages on Facebook. I recently brought a denim bag from Swaraa,” said Suhrita Pantha of Bangalore.

Ditto for Rasmita Bhole of Rajarhat. “The callousness of humans is causing a lot of harm to the environment. So I buy green, whenever possible. I have jute handbags and gorgeous recycled party clutches,” said the 33-year-old.

Affordability is definitely a big draw and the young entrepreneurs are able to keep prices in check as the “returns are faster with recycled items”.

“We make sure our products are affordable. While the price of our bags and accessories ranges from Rs 200 to Rs 600, our wine bottle lamps cost about Rs 850,” said Paromita, who has customers in the UAE and Australia as well.

While most of these green entrepreneurs retail online, Chandoni Basu has set up shop in Dakshinapan. “When I opened Aranya in 1999, nobody had heard of recycled items. We started with paper bags but no one took it seriously. Awareness has increased. People now want to use recycled stuff,” Chandoni said.