Couple Turn Waste Bags Into Handbags

Plastic collected in Delhi is stitched into brightly coloured handbags.

The bags are gathered from waste dumps in Delhi. A couple in India have found a solution to the problem of plastic bags littering the streets of Delhi - by turning them into fashionable handbags.

Anita and Shaleb Ahuja employ people in slum areas of the city to collect plastic bags, which are a major problem throughout the country—often ending up polluting the environment, littering streets and blocking drains.

The discarded bags are washed and sorted before being turned into plastic sheets, which are then refashioned into handbags.

“We were already into waste management, and we were getting a lot of plastic waste,” Mrs Ahuja told BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.

“That’s when we decided to try and find a solution to this big problem.”

Potential

Mrs Ahuja and her husband established an NGO called Conserve to launch their idea, using their life savings to set it up.

Some women snip at the handles of bags to make them into sheets; others wash them in water and detergent and hang them on a clothes line.

These are then moulded together into single sheets of thick, durable plastic, and stitched into bright, colourful handbags.

Mrs Ahuja said the idea came by accident, when a friend making fabric bags asked for a few sheets of plastic, and designed the first bag.

“I showed it to my friends, and they liked it very much,” she said.

“That was when it struck me that it had potential as a green enterprise.”

It has now become a highly successful enterprise, employing 300 people and with a turnover of around Rs. 60 lakhs.

“Lots of women come to me and say they too want to work here,” said Gita Pande, one of the Conserve workers.

“I don’t want to travel out of a slum to work. I feel safe here, so I don’t mind working here.

“I’m also doing something that’s useful. Polythene bags clog our drains. Cows eat them and get choked. By making them into bags, they get used, and unemployed people get jobs.

“I feel it’s good for municipality as well, because we are taking garbage off the streets, and they don’t have to clean them.”

Experimenting with colours, Anita and her group have created an array of colours using the throwaway plastic bags. Conserve exports around 4,000 bags a month.

“I know we are making scarcely a dent in the vast problem of plastic garbage that wreaks havoc in our lives, but in a way what we do at Conserve is one way to deal with the problem. Delhi is a land-locked city and we are getting buried under our own garbage. If more such units come up, doing different things, it could change the environment,” says Anita. Conserve is now trying out various accessories, and embellishing plastic sheets with embroidery. It is also busy designing belts, sandal straps, etc. “Now that we have discovered that it is possible to recycle plastic bags into sheets, we know that they can be made into fashion accessories, sandals, lampshades, home accessories — the sky is the limit.”

“Before we think of teaching people abroad we want to try a similar programme in other states like Rajasthan, where people can both get employment and, in a small way, do something about plastic menace.”

-Courtesy,
www..new.bbc.co.uk and www.infochangeindia.org

With investments from VCs Conserve has come a long way from the time we featured them last in our magazine. —Ed.