A cafe where tyres become chairs: Hyderabad’s Samatha Kitchen reimagines waste

What if the chair you sit on at a cafe was once a discarded tyre, or the table in front of you has been shaped from recycled plastic that might otherwise have ended up in a landfill? At Samatha Kitchen in Hyderabad, these are not design choices but the foundation of an idea. The newly-opened cafe uses repurposed material, turning waste into functional infrastructure, while creating pathways for livelihoods for people from marginalised communities.

The cafe, established under the Hope In a Cup (HIC) model, was inaugurated by Minister Ponnam Prabhakar at the Hyderabad District Collectorate at Lakdi-ka-pul on Thursday (April 9).