Guwahati: The shopping surge associated with Black Friday is receiving an unusual counterpoint from an Assam-based tea brand that is encouraging consumers not to buy.
While Black Friday has become a global symbol of hyper-consumption, the retail sector has been flagged by experts for its substantial environmental footprint. For example, UK data estimates this shopping event produces around 1.5 million tonnes of waste, with about half attributed just to packaging.
Another analysis reports that Black Friday-week deliveries in the UK emitted the equivalent of 435 flights between London and New York.
Against this backdrop, Woolah — founded by Sivasagar-based entrepreneur Upamanyu Borkakoty — is taking a different line. Instead of heavy discounting, the brand is raising its prices and launching an “Anti-Black Friday Sale — For the Planet” campaign. The move comes amid growing concern in the tea industry over low-grade production, packaging waste, and microplastic pollution in ready-to-brew formats.
Woolah’s product innovation centres on a patented “bagless tea-dip” format that uses only the top two leaves and a bud of whole-leaf tea, rather than conventional dust tea in plastic or composite sachets.
Borkakoty says he launched the company after identifying “a fundamental flaw in the global tea industry: the majority of mass-market tea is low-grade dust packaged in materials that release billions of microplastics into hot water.”
In alignment with its “anti-sale” message, Woolah has partnered with environmentalist Jadav Payeng — the “Forest Man of India” — to launch a long-term initiative dubbed the 10,000 Trees Project, aimed at restoring native biodiversity in Northeast India. Consumers are being invited to pledge against unnecessary purchases — with no purchase required to participate. The campaign’s core message: “If you need something, buy thoughtfully. If you don’t, don’t buy at all.”
“Every year, Black Friday encourages us to buy more without thinking about what it costs the planet. This time, we didn’t want to be part of that cycle. Our Anti-Black Friday campaign is our way of saying: slowing down is also a choice, and sometimes the most meaningful thing a brand can do is not push people to consume more.
“Woolah started with that belief — that business can be kinder, farming can heal the land, and growth doesn’t have to damage what we depend on. The 10,000 Trees Project comes from that same place. It doesn’t feel like a campaign to us. It feels like a responsibility — something we owe back to the soil, the communities we work with, and the future we hope to leave behind,” Upamanyu Borkakoty, Founder, Woolah Tea, said.
While symbolic campaigns gain media attention, the broader challenge lies in shifting entrenched consumer behaviour, restructuring supply chains and addressing packaging and disposal systems at scale.
For Woolah, the gamble is that sustainability-driven positioning will resonate not just as ethical branding, but as a differentiator in a crowded tea market. Whether that translates into long-term market advantage remains to be seen.
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