bhubaneswar in an attempt to go green and with the spirit of working towards a sustainable community national institute of fashion technology nift bhubaneswar campus is going to set up centre for sustainable fashion the centre will promote and popularise use and production of natural and organically produced fibres and diesin sometime from now nift bhubaneswar campus will be the only institution in the world where students can see the entire sustainable fashion value chain from farm to fashion this would give a tremendous boost to our handloom and khadi sector we are going to have agriculture units in the campus said director of nift bhubaneswar binay bhusan jenathe campus has plans to rear all varieties of silk like eri mulberry and tasar in its premises everything is grown naturally here our students will learn how to produce natural fabrics from farms we have proposed the centre to set up research and development laboratories for natural fabrics and natural dye in the campus which will be one of its kind in the country jena addedof the 104 acre campus currently the nift authorities have done plantation in 25 acres area they have identified about 60 locally grown dye yielding plants and made a natural dye garden in the campus similarly they are also experimenting with 10 different varieties of locally grown natural fibre plants like bombax kanaf okra banana sisal pineapple jute cotton and flaxthey have done plantation of feeder plants for sericulture and for pollination kept five bee boxes with the help of khadi and village industries corporation kvic nift has taken a series of environmentfriendly initiatives like replacing plastic dustbins with bamboo dustbins banning the use of plastic bags preparing ecofriendly cotton bags with natural dye paints going one step ahead in making a truly green campus the nationallevel institute has banned chemical fertilizer or pesticides in the campus the campus has also done water harvesting and compostingwe decided to replace all the plastic dustbins with ecofriendly ones we tried on government emarketplace gem and in open market to find dustbins with ecotag but failed the waiting ended when we decided to make something on our own we started with two bamboo artisans to make these products now the same artisans have got multiple orders from others too jena pointed outto make the ecofriendly dustbins they used all the broken pieces of windowframes destroyed in cyclone fani to make the stands for the dustbins it may not work the way a plastic dustbin works but in many ways it is far better environment friendly to any plastic dustbin he added the idea has been influenced many others to use bamboo dustbins and the artisans got orders for more dustbins leading to increase in their income