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Fashion Recycling: How Southern Designers are Re-using and Making Money

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

With the rising awareness of the importance of doing fashion in an ethical and sustainable way, more and more fashion designers in the South are getting very creative. Fashion earns big money around the world: The global clothing industry is estimated to be worth US $900 billion a year.

In Paris, the Ethical Fashion Show, now in its fifth year, showcases fashion that respects people and the environment while still being glamorous, luxurious and trendy. It has attracted designers from around the world, including Mongolia, Thailand, China, Peru and Bolivia. The show demands that all participants adhere to International Labour Organization conventions – including banning forced and child labour – respect for the environment, creating local employment and working with craftspeople to ensure skills are retained and the fashion reflects the diversity of the world’s cultures.

In Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Felicite Mai is using pride in her nation’s top export commodity, cocoa (Ivory Coast is the world’s number one exporter of cocoa), to make smart fashion wear at affordable prices. She has turned the beige-coloured jute sacks used to ship cocoa beans around the world into clothes for men and women.

“Ivory Coast’s economy is based on agriculture, especially cocoa and coffee. So I decided to promote these crops by creating these fashion designs,” Mai, whose real name is Maimouna Camara Gomet, told the Reuters news agency.

“For me, it’s a way of drawing the whole world’s attention to cocoa and coffee,” she said

Mai comes from a family of cocoa planters and is a graduate of a sewing school. She works out of a studio-cum-shop in the Treichville suburb of Abidjan.

The clothes are usually beige, but some are dyed dark brown or blue. They include skirts, tops, trousers, shirts, waistcoats, caps, bags and accessories; she gets the sacks – most emblazoned with “Product of Ivory Coast, Cocoa” — from the city’s port warehouses. She cleans the jute cloth first, before creating the fashions.

“I had this idea from when I was still at sewing school in 1987. Then I opened my own workshop in 1996 and I first launched these kind of designs in 2003 during a fashion contest at Divo (in the south of Ivory Coast)” said Mai, who has several assistants at her shop.

She has been able to attract as clients local celebrities, artists and musicians and even a few from abroad.

In Brazil, it is footwear that is getting the recycled-look treatment. The brand Melissa specializes in plastic shoes that are eco-friendly and made from 100 percent recycled materials. They use a plastic called melflex made from recovered plastic. The shoes are made in injection molds and the factory is so efficient, it has next to no waste as a byproduct. It recycles all the waste and water used in the production process. And as a plus, they make a point of paying the workers well, and supporting social and environmental causes in Brazil.

Their secret to putting zing into recycled plastic shoes is to have high-profile, celebrity designers design some of the shoes. So far, they have had UK fashion mistress Vivienne Westwood, the Campana Brothers, and the UK-based, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid. Hadid is a controversial figure who always stirs up debate, and her rubber shoes have brought attention to the brand.

The Chilean studio Modulab has turned to recycled rubber from the car industry to make bags. The rubber comes in sheets so it is easy to cut and shape into bags, thus reducing the amount of time and energy used to make the bags. The line is called RTA (ready to assemble) and includes three types of bags: an envelope, a handbag and a messenger bag. Each sheet of recycled rubber comes with the specific slots and pins for the consumer to put the bag together at home, without any glue or sewing involved. Energy used in the making of the entire bag is 100 percent human, except in the production of the material itself.

In Ghana, the cheeky Ghanaian businessman-cum-fashion designer Kwabena Osei Bonsu wanted to do something about the ubiquitous plastic bags that pollute the landscape of the capital, Accra.

In Accra, a small city of 2.2 million people, up to 60 tons of plastic packaging is dumped on the streets every day, a figure that has risen by 70 per cent over the past decade.

“I wanted to come up with an idea that would solve problems in my lifetime,” he said to the Independent.

He came up with the brilliantly simple solution of turning these wasted and damaging plastic bags back into usable and fashionable carryalls and handbags. He collects the plastic sacks and stitches them back together. The business, Trashy Bags, employs a dozen tailors and seamstresses. Launched in December last year, it so far has collected 10 million used plastic sachets from the streets, and sold more than 6,000 bags. Handbags go for US $7.79.

Ghana’s huge quantity of discarded plastic water bottles are gathered up for recycling too. A storage room overflows with more than 3 million sachets that have been collected and cleaned ready for recycling.

Bonsu’s business has turned into a source of income for local people, who receive US $3.89 for 1,000 sachets – a good return where the average yearly income is US $495

“I collect sachets because I am jobless and this gives me money,” said Hadiza Ishmael, a 55-year-old grandmother who has delivered 4,000 plastic bags. “It also makes the place look nicer.”

Published: August 2008

Resources

  • The Re: Fashion Awards show is a brand new fashion phenomenon, set to transform social and environmental standards in the fashion industry within a decade. The RE:Fashion Awards will take place in London in November 2008. The glittering event will see major faces from the fashion world come together to recognise the most significant development in the fashion industry of the 21st century. The deadline for budding fashion designers to enter their contest is August 20th.
    Website: http://www.refashionawards.org/
  • A photogallery of the cocoa fashions:
    here: Photogallery 1
    and here: Photogallery 2
    And a video of Mai making the garments here: Video
  • Ethical Fashion Show: Isabelle Quehe, who established the event, said “You almost never see designers from developing countries doing shows in Paris, so this brings together natural products, local fair labour, respect for the environment and finding sales outlets in Paris.” Potential designers and exhibitors can contact the Ethical Fashion Show by sending collection photos and a brief explanation on how the fashions contribute to the ethical fashion movement.
    Send contributions to: 4, rue Trousseau 75011 Paris
    Email: unilove@wanadoo.fr
  • Once inspired to get into the global fashion business, check out this business website for all the latest news, jobs and events.
    Website: http://us.fashionmag.com/news/index.php
  • A creative agency specialising in the promotion of African culture to the world. They organise RUNWAY AFRICA—Africa’s annual Fall Fashion Show featuring five of Africa’s most promising rising design stars on the runway.
    Website: http://inspirationafrica.org/aboutus.html
  • Green fashion must really be making an impact–the BBC, Britain’s venerable public broadcaster, has started an on-line fashion magazine. Called Thread. Fashion Without Victim, it is dedicated to bringing the “latest of eco-fabulous style”. Through a “unique mix of affordable fashion, exclusive videos, photo galleries and thought-provoking features” the site is committed to promoting all aspects of ethical fashion.
    Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/thread/
  • Traidcraft fights poverty through trade, helping people in developing countries to transform their lives. Established in 1979 as a Christian response to poverty, we are the UK’s leading fair trade organisation.
    Website: http://www.traidcraftshop.co.uk/default.aspx

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

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A Solution to Stop Garbage Destroying Tourism

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Tourism is an essential source of income for countries across the South. But many put that livelihood in jeopardy when they lose control of garbage collection. A popular tourist spot can represent a ‘paradise’ to visitors, but when it becomes too popular and local garbage collection systems collapse under the burden, ‘paradise’ can soon turn to an environmental hell.

The small, tourist-friendly Indonesian island of Bali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali) – known for its idyllic pleasures of spas, surf and serenity – is being overwhelmed by garbage. A survey of tourists found two-thirds would not return to the island because of the problem.

Tourism took off on the island in the 1970s. The economic benefits are clear: the island went from being economically marginal to ranking second only to the country’s capital, Jakarta, in wealth creation. The island received more than 2.38 million tourists in 2009, up 14.5 percent compared with 2008, according to Ida Komang Wisnu, head of the provincial statistics office. But tourism produces on average five kilograms of waste a day per tourist – 10 times what the average Indonesian produces (Bali Fokus).

In the past, the traditional way of serving food in Indonesia was to wrap it in, or serve it on, a palm leaf: a biodegradable approach. But with the huge expansion in use of plastics and non-biodegradable packaging, the waste disposal problem is out of control.

In Indonesia, government garbage disposal services tend to collect between 30 and 40 percent of solid waste, most of this from high income communities. The majority poor population are left to fend for themselves when it comes to waste disposal.

A solution by Yuyun Ismawati, an environmental engineer and consultant, has since 1996 focused on helping poor communities find ways to safely dispose of waste. In 2000, she started her own NGO – Bali Fokus (http://balifokus.asia/balifokus/) – and opened a waste management facility in the Bali village of Temesi. The recycling plant employs 40 people from the village, who sort garbage into recyclables, compost and residual waste. Income from the recycled waste and compost goes to helping local farmers.

She then expanded her concept to include households around Bali and elsewhere in Indonesia. She concentrated on housewives and targeted reducing the amount of household waste going to dump sites. A core team trains housewives in daily habits that separate waste and compost organic matter like vegetable and fruit scraps. Bali Fokus claims it has been able to reduce waste created by 50 percent in 500 homes. Some of the women sell their compost in local markets; recyclables are turned into sellable items.

From 2001 to 2003, Ismawati turned this approach into a replicable template called SANIMAS. By 2008, the SANIMAS template was being used in hundreds of communities across Indonesia.

Her solution to the deluge of tourist waste can be seen in the luxury Jimbaran Bay area of Bali. Traditionally, the area’s hotels would sell their waste to pig farmers. While the pigs feasted on the fancy scraps, the rest of the waste was put in plastic bags and thrown away in mangrove forests.

“I told hotels: Your job is to sell rooms, not to sell garbage,” Ismawati recalls. “We have to protect Bali or else tourists won’t want to come here anymore.”

Ismawati cleverly turned the relationship around: rather than a pig farmer paying for scraps, she convinced one of them there was money to be made recycling and sorting garbage. For this, the hotels would pay the farmer.

A network of 25 hotels now pays to have their garbage taken away and sorted by hand: an important source of full-time jobs.

The workers sort through paper, plastics, glass, aluminium, food scraps and vegetables. Each week, 140 trucks deliver waste to the facility. Only 10 leave with waste that has to go to a dump site.

Food leftovers are bought by local pig farmers and grass clippings and other organic matter is composted (http://www.recyclenow.com/home_composting/), and eventually makes its way back to the hotels and is distributed in the flower beds.

This system has created 400 jobs where the pig farmer once only employed 10 people.

“If you want a hi-tech solution in a developing country you will wait and wait and wait until you get the money, or big donors to fund it,” Ismawati told the Telegraph newspaper. “And even then it may not work.”

A graphic example of this is a donated waste recycling machine given by the local government. It can’t be used because the electricity to power it costs too much. Human labour is a cheaper option.

Bali Fokus’ successful approach has now been replicated in six other sites on the nearby island of Java. And the government of Indonesia has promised to help create 15 more each year.

In 2009 Ismawati won the Goldman Award (http://www.goldmanprize.org/), which honors grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America.

She is also working on using decentralized grassroots approaches to bringing sewage disposal and clean water to communities.

Published: March 2010

Resources

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive

Banning of Plastic Bags and Containers Brings New Opportunities

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

This month, Uganda bans plastic bags, outlawing their import, manufacture and use and joining a growing list of African countries seeking to sweep cities of this menace. Uganda’s ban follows similar moves in Kenya and in Tanzania, where even plastic drinks containers will soon be banished. Rwanda, also a member of the East African Community, has gone further – in 2005 the country banned any products made of very thin plastic below 100 microns. The thinner plastic found in plastic bags (under 30 microns) is particularly troublesome because it is easily blown around by the wind. The proliferation of plastic bags and plastic containers across the developing world has not only become an eyesore, it is also an environmental catastrophe that is poisoning the land.

In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, discarded plastic has combined with toxic waste management practices to make the problem worse. While Kampala has 30 companies dealing in solid waste management, the process is mired in corruption. Poor areas of the city receive no service because it is more profitable for the companies to target wealthy areas for the user fees they collect to remove rubbish.

Scavengers in the municipal dump of Kampala earn 50 Ugandan pence a day collecting plastic bags. Most plastic bags do not make it to the dump, ending up blown around the city by the wind, washed into drains and water courses. Worse, the rich soil around Uganda’s towns and villages is now covered in plastic bags. A new layer of polythene and contaminated soil has formed in many areas, with an impenetrable crust that stops rain from soaking through. It leaves water stagnating in pools gurgling with methane gas bubbles.

For entrepreneurs, tackling the mountains of plastic waste is an opportunity – as is providing a replacement once they are banned. A boon time is emerging for the market in recycled and reusable materials and biodegradable alternatives.

The So Afr-Eco Community Upliftment Project for Rural Women in South Africa is a common example. A project that proves money can be made from recycling discarded plastic bags into useful items. Based in the Obanjeni district in Kwazulunatal, it was founded by Jenny Kirkland, who was disgusted with the proliferation of plastic bags littering South Africa’s countryside. She decided to do something that would also hire rural women and give them an income. The plastic bags are cut into strips of twine and then woven together to make hats, bags, doormats and waistcoats. Run as a for-profit business, it now employs 132 families and exports products to 19 countries, including Australia, the USA, the UK, Canada, Sweden and Poland. South African schools are now provided with sun hats and companies order hats for use at conferences. The profits made from sales are significant by local standards. For example, the sale of one beach bag can feed a small family for two weeks, a hat feeds a family for a week, and a doormat for a month.

Anita Ahuja, president of the NGO Conserve, has set up a business making fashionable handbags, wallets and shopping bags from recycled plastic bags in New Delhi, India. Begun in 2003, the project collects plastic bags on the streets and keeps 60 women employed. The recycling process does not require additional dyes or inks and is non-toxic. The bags are sold in London, UK and will soon be sold in Italy by the Benetton clothing chain.

“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,” Ahuja said.

But this issue can be more complex than it first seems. After South Africa banned plastic bags of less than 30 microns in 2003, many poor entrepreneurs have complained that it hit hard their making of hats, handbags, purses and scrubbing brushes from them – something that had become a good livelihood.

After the bags are banned, environmentalists say the best option is to use reusable bags made of materials that don’t harm the environment during production and don’t need to be discarded after use.

Alternatives to plastic bags include traditional African baskets or kiondos as they are known in Kenya. Made from sisal and sometimes with leather or wooden handles, the handmade bags support many local women (http://www.propoortourism-kenya.org/african_bags.htm).

In Kenya, entrepreneurs have also stepped in to offer alternatives to plastic and kiondos. Supermarkets and shops in the country distributed 11 million plastic shopping bags a year, so Joseph Ayuka of Greensphere Enterprises has begun to market cotton bags for their easy portability. “People don’t want to carry bulky bags to the supermarket”, he said.

Resources

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

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Turning Animal Waste Into Paper

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Animal waste is a messy fact of daily life in rural communities across the global South. This byproduct of life has many uses – but an ingredient for making writing paper is probably not the first that springs to mind.

But animal dung is cleverly being recycled into high-value products in Sri Lanka and Thailand. Both countries have elephants who are under threat. In Sri Lanka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka) the large but endangered elephant population is considered a nuisance. They damage crops and are often killed for this reason. There are upwards of 3,000 elephants in the country – down from 14,000 in the 1800s. Nonetheless, they create vast quantities of excrement. In Sri Lanka, they face many threats: ivory poachers, being killed to protect crops and houses, starvation from drought and deforestation.

Animal waste (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feces) has many uses: it can be turned into fertilizer for crops, fuel for cooking, placed in a digester and fermented into bio-gas for heating and cooking, and if from a herbivore animal, into fibrous products like paper and cardboard. Packing boxes can also be made from the excrement.

As a vegetarian animal, elephants’ excrement and dung is made up of vegetable matter and is rich in cellulose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose). And cellulose is what makes up the majority of traditional wood-pulp paper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_%28paper%29).

Re-using the waste is also a good way to make elephants valuable to local people, rather than just being perceived as a nuisance.

Dung produces a natural, recycled paper. While harvesting trees for paper is an expensive and energy-wasting process, the elephant’s digestive tract does the hard work by breaking down the cellulose, making it ideal for the next stage in becoming a paper product.

According to the Environmental Paper Network (http://www.environmentalpaper.org/stateofthepaperindustry/confirm.htm), 50 percent of the world’s forests have been destroyed, and 80 percent of the remaining forests are in a degraded state.  By turning to alternative sources to make paper, trees are saved and vast quantities of energy reduced. Traditional paper-making also uses many chemicals in the process, something that is avoided in using animal dung. Vegetable products are used to bind the paper together and water-soluble dyes are used to colour the paper.

Dung paper has earned some high-profile fans as well. The Turner Prize-winning British/Nigerian artist Chris Ofili (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ofili), uses elephant dung paper in his works.

The Elephant Dung Paper company (www.elephantdungpaper.com) in Thailand was one of the first to pioneer the technique. This business was started by dung paper pioneer Mr. Wan Chai. He tells a story of how he became enchanted by the paper-making process when he walked past a paper factory one day. Later, when he was at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, northern Thailand (http://www.changthai.com), he noticed the elephant dung was rich in fibres like those used in making paper from wood pulp.

Inspired, he embarked on a process of trial and error using his wife’s food processor to turn elephant dung into a fibrous stew that is then shaped, dyed and dried to make paper (http://www.elephantdungpaper.com/process.html).

Wan Chai has gone on to be a formative influence in the founding of a sheep dung paper making operation in Britain, Creative Paper Wales.

Another dung paper business is Mr. Ellie Pooh (http://www.mrelliepooh.com/) in Sri Lanka. Established with the goal of reducing conflict between humans and elephants, it has turned to making paper products to boost local incomes and create a direct economic incentive to protect the elephants. It is setting up handmade paper workshops in rural areas and teaming them with artisans to add value to the products and make them more desirable. Design is critical to making any product – no matter how ethically produced and how green – desirable to consumers.

The dung products Mr. Ellie Pooh makes include a wide variety of coloured papers, scrapbooks, note boxes, stationery pouches, greeting cards, ‘to do’ list pads, memo books, and a children’s book.

The process of making elephant dung paper takes about 13 days – three days of sorting, boiling and disinfecting, followed by 10 days to pulp, mix, press and dry the paper. Mr. Ellie Pooh makes about 1,000 sheets a day and 30,000 a month. Each sheet makes six A4-size pieces of paper.

The company was founded by Dr. Karl Wald and Thusitha Ranasinghe, and is managed by recycled paper firm Ecomaximus (http://www.ecomaximus.com/) based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a workshop in Kegalle.

Ecomaximus was started in 1997 by its Managing Director, Ranasinghe, who was following a family tradition going back three generations of working in printing.

The business started recycling waste printing paper and then moved into recycling a wide variety of other cellulose waste: rice paddy straw, cinnamon and banana bark. It now employs over 35 people on two sites.

It is proof that it just takes creativity and a new perspective to turn something considered as waste into wealth: and jobs and sustainable incomes.

Resources

1) Creative Paper Wales: Makers of Sheep Poo Paper, this company in Wales uses sheep dung to make a range of paper products. Sheep are plentiful in Wales and are found all over the hills grazing. Website: http://www.creativepaperwales.co.uk/index.aspx

2) Paper High sells online paper products made from Sri Lankan elephant dung. This includes note books, greeting cards, photo frames, and photo albums. Website: http://www.paperhigh.com/products/srilanka/srilanka.htm?gclid=CKbHrdaZv6YCFQkf4Qod-hzaHg

3) Red Dot: Red dot stands for belonging to the best in design and business. It champions design in business through awards and events. Website: http://en.red-dot.org/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022