|
By Madhu Gurung Hundreds of thousands of used plastic bags from Delhi are being recycled by Conserve into handbags that are being sold in London and soon in Italy by Benetton. Armies of ragpickers and some poor women from a relocated village on the Delhi-Haryana border work to keep the supply chain going
 What began as a way to deal with the hundreds of used plastic bags that are thoughtlessly thrown away and end up choking our drains and rivers and clogging city pavements, has today metamorphosed into a fashion statement that is wowing buyers in India and abroad.
In 1999, when the Delhi government launched a campaign called Bhagidari, asking its citizens to participate in government civic initiatives, a husband and wife team came forward to take up the challenge. IIT graduate Shalab Ahuja and his writer wife Anita wanted to work on energy efficiency, but they found that most people were obsessed with one major issue: how to manage their garbage. So the Ahujas started a non-government organisation (NGO) called Conserve, explaining how waste could be segregated and made proper use of thereafter. Wet kitchen waste could be turned into compost; dry waste like paper and glass could be recycled. With a grant of Rs 3,50,000 from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the couple began holding seminars and workshops advocating waste management. They formed a network of resident welfare associations from different colonies in Delhi and began a pilot project in a small suburb in east Delhi, Madhuban, where they lived. It was whilst segregating the waste that they encountered their most important challenge. “We had heard of organisations working with zero waste -- it was something we could not understand. Despite our best efforts there was nothing we could do with the mounds of discarded plastic bags. The resale value of polythene is very low, so we started to experiment.” That proved to be the turning point. They washed the plastic bags, braided, rolled them and made them into tiny baskets. But it involved a lot of work, and the couple didn’t see a market for their products. Still, it forced them to work harder to find a solution for the mounds of smelly discarded plastic bags.  Every day, in a small R&D lab in the Ahujas’ home, a team of volunteers experimented to find innovative ways of disposing or recycling the plastic bags. Finally, Byshee Wallace, a college student exploring India on a ‘gap year’ from college, along with some other volunteers, hit upon the idea of washing, drying and pressing the plastic into sheets, using a pressing machine. The result: they came up with small plastic sheets, roughly 12” by 7”. It was the breakthrough they had all been waiting for. From here on it was left to everyone’s imagination.
Anita’s friend Nandita Shaunik, a designer and exporter, took the sheets, lined them and made a few sample handbags. Most people they were shown to found it difficult to believe they were made from discarded plastic bags. In a world where environment-friendly products is the buzzword, Conserve’s recycled plastic bags soon became a fashion statement. Sold tentatively at Dilli Haat, along with wallets, folders and file covers, they were highly appreciated. “What we found was that people had a mental block. They appreciated the idea that it was made from throwaway plastic bags, but they felt it was priced too high. Recycling is difficult and we had a chain of people working on it. Everyone had to be paid and had to get the benefit of the idea. But a surprising thing happened -- people from the different embassies took to the idea very well.” Anita adds: “For the whole process to make a difference, we needed to involve communities. That is when we began working in Narela Gaon, a relocated village on the Delhi-Haryana border where people were living in extreme poverty.” Anita and her small team of volunteers went from house to house asking women to work for them by collecting used plastic bags and washing them. The plastic bags were bought for Rs 15 a kilo. Soon more and more women joined in, collecting plastic bags from the garbage and washing them. To keep the chain moving Anita knew that she had to ensure a market for the bags. So they jumped into the marketing fray. “We found that in India there was not much scope for selling handbags -- the retail shops wanted to take bags only on consignment basis, and only when they sold them did we get the money. It meant that our entire supply chain was dependent on the bags being sold.” That was when Anita asked her husband Shalab to help out. Together with his designer friends Andrew Wilde and Sebastian Assad, Shalab scouted the export market and got a favourable response. Today, Conserve’s handbags are sold at well-known retail shops in London. The Italian clothing store Benetton is also negotiating to sell Conserve bags under its own label. That will first be tried out in 130 of its stores in Italy before it is readied for the rest of the European market. Getting into the export business came with its own unique set of demands. Anita found that export orders came in bulk -- in one style and colour. This was a challenge. “We found that it became very difficult to get in touch with the women of Narela Gaon, as there were no telephones, and manning both the collection and production points became problematic. Most of the time the women could not deliver the particular colour of plastic required, and that was a problem. We do not use any dye for our sheets -- all the colours come from the discarded plastic bags that are arranged to form a pattern and unique colour scheme when pressed.” Anita then decided to work with rag-pickers and picked a colony close to her home in Madhuban. The road to Madanpur Khadar goes past the swampy rundown Yamuna canal -- a clogged and dying stretch of water where people defecate and wash, and pigs wallow. The smell hits you as soon as you enter the colony, where you see trucks lined up, loaded with discarded newspapers, bottles and plastic oil cans. “While we worked at Narela Gaon, the government’s response was favourable, but when we began working with the rag-pickers we faced animosity. We were told we were doing illegal activity with illegal immigrants on illegal ground. In relocated slums there is no rag-picking industry.” Private contractors rent sheds erected on this ‘informal space’ for a sum of Rs 6,000 a month; a team of rag-pickers works under them. Conserve buys the plastic from the contractors. Anita insisted she was going to give it her best shot. “The rag-pickers are the most marginalised section of our society. If the government thinks they are illegal immigrants they should be penalised. If not, they should be allowed to live with dignity and given the opportunity to make a good life.” At dawn every day the rag-pickers begin their backbreaking work of sorting out other people’s garbage. The handles and bottoms of the plastic bags are snipped away and the open sheets washed with detergent on a cemented buffalo water trough. They are hung to dry on a clothesline and then layered together and pressed to make sheets that are designed, cut and stitched to perfection. Experimenting with colours, Anita and her group have created an array of colours using only the throwaway plastic bags. Already Conserve exports around 4,000 bags a month, made from plastic collected by the rag-pickers. Once design samples are approved by buyers and retail shops, the plastic sheets are given to fabricators who live in the crowded slum areas of Tughlaqabad, Bara Hindu Rao, Navikarim, Saket and Kalam. “Families of 10-12 people live in one-room tenements. At night they sleep and in the morning it becomes their workplace,” says Anita. “After the rag-pickers, it’s these fabricators who need a helping hand.” “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, embellishing the plastic sheets with embroidery. It is also busy designing belts, sandal straps, etc. “Now that we have discovered recycling plastic bags into sheets, they can be made into fashion accessories, sandals, lampshades, home accessories -- the sky is the limit.” While there are no limits to the imagination, Anita admits that until the rag-pickers get some form of recognition they will constantly face uncertainties in getting used plastic bags from the garbage collectors. “Not too long ago Conserve was dependent on funding from the Asian Development Bank. Now we are 100% self-sustaining,” says Anita with satisfaction. Already, Conserve is getting feelers from IKEA and Habitat for its products, and from countries as far away as Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela where NGOs want to repeat similar experiments. She says: “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 the plastic menace.” Contact: Anita Ahuja
President - Conserve
A-116 Madhuban, Vikas Marg
New Delhi 110092
Tel: 011--22413112
Mobile -- 9868212186
Email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web: www.conserveindia.org (Madhu Gurung is a Delhi-based journalist and researcher.) InfoChange News & Features, April 2005
|
