The Hindu Business Line : You won't trash this trend!

Smart fashion accessories — handbags, wallets and shopping bags — made from recycled plastic bags? Yes, thanks to the efforts of Conserve, a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on waste management. It started working with plastic bags about two years ago and tried various innovations before it came up with a solution. "We braided them and tried weaving them, but the plastic would come loose. Then we hit upon the idea of pressing them to make sheets," says Anita Ahuja, President of Conserve.

Waste management is one of the biggest problems that India faces and Anita and her friends have been tackling the issue since 1998. They worked on a waste management project with low-income groups in Mandaoli (a Delhi slum) for nearly four years, and then started another project in Safdarjung. "We collected waste from 500 houses to make compost in a municipal corporation park. That's when we realised how much plastic the city uses. So we started on the plastic bag project."

Conserve came up with the novel idea of turning used plastic bags into trendy handbags, shopping bags, wallets, tablemats and notepad covers. These are being snapped up by environment-friendly shoppers, who are happy to support an idea that has changed the lives of slum women and turned one of the banes of city life into a saleable product. The plastic bags are collected by women from east Delhi slums (Phoragaon, Yamuna Pusta and Mandaoli). Each day, they scavenge around the garbage bins, hunt in choked drains and pick up flyaway trash on traffic-infested roads. The plastic they collect is thoroughly washed, dried, separated by colour and arranged in trays; the women wear masks while working to protect themselves from plastic toxicity. The plastic bags then go into a machine designed by Conserve, which presses them into thick sheets. These sheets are then bought by Conserve.

Every 200 gm of plastic sheets fetches the women between Rs 10 and Rs 20. A number of families survive on these earnings alone. It takes about 60 plastic bags to make one sheet, which is then cut, lined with cloth and stitched or moulded into the various products that Conserve designs.

Plastic bags collected by women from low-income groups are turned into a saleable product.

The handbags and other products are made by fabricators — about 50 handbags a day — at the Conserve workshops. But ordinary things such as shopping bags and tablemats are made by the women who have collected and processed the plastic. Conserve has now set up a number of plastic bag collection centres.

Besides the plastic gathered by women from the slums, plastic bags are also collected from the Hyatt International Hotel, the American School and local kabariwallahs (who collect and sell recyclable trash such as old newspapers, plastics, bottles, etc).

Says Anita: "I have started looking at plastic differently. Much to my family's embarrassment, I get out of my car at traffic lights and pick up colourful plastic bags from the roads. It's very difficult to colour plastic and we use no dyes. Colourful bags make the sheets more vibrant." She admits that most people are hesitant about buying bags made from waste plastic. "We tell the women making the sheets that they must wash the plastic very carefully, for buyers will be looking at both quality and cleanliness." Conserve's efforts were amply rewarded when the products they recently put up during a special event at Dilli Haat (a permanent crafts bazaar) were all sold out. The products sold at reasonable prices — handbags between Rs 300 and Rs 1,500, shopping bags from Rs 50 to Rs 250 and wallets between Rs 100 and Rs 300.

Conserve's products have also attracted international customers. Hanna Jandrup from Denmark is so impressed with their range that she has ordered 300 bags, making it Conserve's first export order.

"I am floored by the idea of what you can do with throwaway plastic. I am definitely coming back for more. They could expand their work further... into accessories, household goods... The sky is the limit," says Hannah.

Anita and her team are thrilled with the compliments they have been receiving. "If we count the human hours put into the project, I can safely say we have invested roughly Rs 1 lakh in it. We hope we can get a grant to buy sewing machines. At present, women gather in the homes of those who have machines and this slows down our production. We also need more sheet-presser machines and we need to expand our collection centres. But more importantly, the women who work for Conserve should become the shareholders of the company. If that happens then in our small way, we may get people to see throwaway plastic bags differently."

Women's Feature Service

Picture by V. Ganesan

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