Power over Plastic: Recycling - and rebuilding lives - in India
Political writer, Anita Ahuja found a way to make good use of the plastic bags thrown away in Delhi. Winsome Lane meets the environmentally friendly bag lady at Fashion Access.
Rubbish Collector
India is the world's third-largest consumer of plastic products, just behind the US and China, and its demand grows by 12% a year, according to official figures. The discarded plastic clogs up drains, leads to flooding in the cities and even gets into the stomach of domestic animals. Studies have shown that the average cow in India has at least 100 plastic bags in its stomach when it dies. Anita Ahuja was determined to do something about it. |
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It all began in 1998 when Ahuja decided that the plastic bags clogging up her city could be recycled into something useful. Over the next two years, she experimented with various things. During these tests, she collected used plastic bags herself, and her friends and family had to get accustomed to her suddenly leaving them, or stopping her car to rush across the street and pick up some filthy bags from the gutter.
She soon discovered that the bags could be pressed together and made into a strong yet light material. The existing colors of the bags could be kept for the new fabric, so no dyeing was necessary. Purely as an experiment, she made up some tote bags, file folders and pen-holders from the fabric and took 15 pieces along to a trade fair at the US embassy in Delhi. To her surprise, they sold out within an hour and she realized she might have hit on a good idea. |
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Photo: Left, Anita Ahuja, at Fashion Access in Hong Kong, with Harsha Chauhan, who represents her company in the city. In October last year, Ahuja won the Best of APLF award for the Best Eco-Friendly Collection at the fair.
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With the help of a designer friend, Nandita Shaunik, she began to make fashion bags and belts. Meanwhile, Ahuja's engineer husband, Shabalha, had invented a machine - with patent pending - that takes the used plastic bags and compresses them into the new fabric, called polyethylene. The couple formed a non-profit and non-government organisation called Conserve to produce and market the fashion accessories. Then they hired members of the lowest caste to forage for used plastic bags and taught unskilled workers to make the new bags in their living rooms. |
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Ahuja tells ReviewAsia. "Since we began in 2000, our workers have been making the bags in the small living rooms of their houses, but now we have plenty of space. It is a modern factory with areas for design, a sampling unit, production unit, quality control, inspection and packaging." |
Award-winning goods
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Exhibiting these products at various trade fairs also helps stimulate sales. In October last year, Ahuja presented her goods at the APLF - Fashion Access in Hong Kong and won an award for the Best Eco-Friendly Collection. She will be joining the APLF - Fashion Access again later this month.
"Conserve won the award for the effective use of throwaway plastic bags, renewing them as innovative material with great visual appeal and translating them into fashionable products. Anita Ahuja is a remarkable woman and a great fashion innovator," said Perrine Ardouin, events organiser for APLF. |
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Ahuja also conducted a seminar for buyers during the Hong Kong show, talking on the recycling of waste materials for fashion production.
So far, several European chain stores have made enquiries and the products are being taken by lifestyle chain store Habitat in the UK while a big New York retailer has given Conserve a firm order for 50,000 bags, according to Ahuja. |
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However, despite the retail success, Ahuja feels she has yet to solve the plastic bag problem. "Recycling plastic bags in this manner is a motivation to dispose of them correctly. It is not a whole solution and should not be accepted as an endorsement for continued use of plastic bags," she says. "They are an enormous nuisance and hopefully, one day, the need for them will no longer be felt. Until then, every effort must be taken so that these eyesores are collected from the garbage dumps and recycled appropriately." |
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Extracted from ReviewAsia - March 2008 | |
