Students Shriya Baru and Noah Elliott share how they incorporate sustainability into their student businesses.
The Office of Sustainability would like to highlight student business owners who have integrated sustainability efforts into their operations.
Oaks Originals is an on-campus initiative that provides student business owners with opportunities to showcase their products to the Elon community. Students are able to access pop-ups, workshops, networking and consulting events that help them to further their journeys as entrepreneurs.
Many student business owners at Elon have worked to incorporate sustainability into their products and designs.
Shriya Baru ’25 is an accounting major at Elon, and her business, Kolis USA, started as a passion project that allowed her to channel her creative interests, and has grown into a lifestyle brand that incorporates Indian design through handcrafted products including candles, jewelry and accessories. Oaks Originals has allowed Baru to further her passion for entrepreneurship while maintaining a commitment to sustainability in various forms.
“KOLIS connects to sustainability through small-batch, handcrafted production that minimizes waste, reusable candle jars and durable materials, reduced transportation impact, and a focus on cultural sustainability,” Baru says.
Noah Elliott ’28, is an economics and financial Technology major whose business, Elliott Ringworks, makes and sells fine jewelry. Throughout his time at Elon, Elliott has become particularly interested in how business and management connect to jewelry making. His jewelry-making process involves the recycling of silver and metal scraps:
“I take my old scraps from previous projects, such as off cuts and old rings. I then combine that with new silver in the form of a coin and heat it up to 1763 degrees. It all melts together and I can pour it out into useable ingots and make more jewelry out of it,” Elliott says.
For more information on student vendors at Oak Originals, visit this link. For more information on student groups involved with sustainability on campus, please visit the Office of Sustainability’s website.