Artisan Story: Conserve Conserve - Born of a desire to reduce India's mountain of waste, improve energy efficiency, and help some of Delhi's poorest out of the city's slums, Conserve India achieves all this by turning plastic bags into high fashion. Conserve started as a fledgling recycling project but quickly adapted to confront the biggest challenge it was facing – what to do with the thousands of plastic bags that could not be composted or recycled locally.