Recycling: it’s in the bag

An Indian NGO is enjoying huge success with a recycling project turning plastic bags into desirable fashion accessories, and it is using the proceeds to fund important development projects among the poor of India. Conserve, an NGO run by a couple called Shalabh and Anita Ahuja, makes discarded plastic bags into brightly coloured handbags for sale in fashionable boutiques across Europe and the United States.

This project makes ingenious use of the versatility and durability of plastics to create these striking accessories. Plastic bags of a variety of colours are combined to make eye-catching designs. Although they make use of leather handles, the bags are predominantly manufactured from recycled plastics, and the end result is both chic and of surprisingly high quality.

The bags are made by a process of carefully hand-stitching plastic bags together to make the desired patterns, and then heat-pressing them together into sheets. Designers then use the sheets of patterned plastic to create handbags and other accessories such as shoes and jewellery. The bags use as much recycled material as possible, and no additional chemical dyes are required.

Conserve is a not-for-profit organisation, not an ordinary business, and this project is run to have social as well as environmental benefits. The plastic bags are gathered from municipal dumps and made into plastic sheets by people living in some of Delhi’s poorest slums, before being sewn into handbags by skilled workers from poor backgrounds. Conserve uses the labour of more than 300 people to help make its handbags, making a real difference to people living in poverty in Delhi.

It just goes to show that plastics are too valuable to be wasted, and should never just be thrown away. If a handful of simple plastic bags can produce something as beautiful as these handbags, think what could be done with the other plastics that we all throw away.