TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, March 26 (PIA)—Tagbilaran City has its ample share of problems: unemployed women, homemakers economically hostaged by circumstances, lack of capacities to be productive and a heaping problem of plastic garbage.
But instead of looking at these problems and sulk, women leaders here took the issues as an opportunity through for growth and possibly making history.
This is through Plastic Recycling Project for Improving Women’s Income (PRP4IWI), shares Ellen Grace Gallares, the program marketing consultant, during the recent Kapihan sa PIA.
PRP4IWI proposes a solution to the plastic garbage problem, and this is through upcycling and recycling, where we can covert thrash into cash as additional income for city women, Gallares said.
Women here, organized under Katipunan ng mga Liping Pilipina (KALIPI) of the 15 baragays with the BLGUs and the CLGUs sat and planned, trained and enhanced their skills to be more productive, capitalizing on their nurture capacities and their attention to details.
We picked women as beneficiaries to show women play a huge role in creating an alternative and living economy if they are given enough knowledge, right equipment. We want to show that women are not limited in their economic development by training but they can be part of the innovation revolution happening world-wide, Gallares, who appeared so enthused, cited.
The over-all goal is to reduce plastic wastes getting into the sanitary landfills and help nurture the environment, grant women their creativity skills through creating beautiful products from trashed plastic, sell from it for additional income, manage the manufacturing operations to make it sustainable and practice their skills in manipulating modern production machineries that are fitted to their capacities, Gallares who had a long stint in non-government organization work prior to being the marketing consultant detailed.
We are now building garbage upcycling facilities or plants in two areas, while 13 others would be built in each of Tagbilaran City barangays would soon rise.
In the recycling plants which the City Government and the Barangay Governments co-share are two hydraulic heat presses and one cold press that have a press weight of 5-15 tons, a laser cutter and design drawing boards complete with standard color charts and cellophane density categorizations.
According to Gallares, "from trash, we can have plastic sheets using science applications where women who create them understand the types of plastic that can be recycled which machines can press. You see, women work best when it entails meticulous details, and their creativity is enhanced with science of the arts and the proper color combination to have products that are visually appealing."
"We want them to be entrepreneurs and not feel that they are just abused workers, so they too can bring out the technologies and skills in their homes, them being home-makers in the first place," according to Gallares.
After the two plants now set in Cogon and Poblacion 1, there are more upcycling facilities to be installed with implementing partners and assisted by Japan Keio University, the project funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Things got excited after the Department of Trade and Industry opened the innovation incubator in the technology-based Fabrication laboratory at the Bohol Island State University.
We just scaled up FabLab which was basically helping students in industrial design come up with their design prototypes, and then we saw women as catalysts for innovation in the city.
That started PRP4IWI as women learned about the heat press machines and how we tweaked the design to assure women safety amidst the tons of heavy equipment operation. The trick is in another technology, the hydraulic systems where women can now operate heavy industrial machines by minimal strength.
To produce desirable colors, women are shown charts and they are made to understand what kind of plastics to be used to get the desired colors.
To make the production as labor intensive, we decided to leave the manual cutting, because we want more women to participate, as machines tend to remove human participation in the manufacture, Gallares said.
The project also teaches women to use gadgets: electronic weighing scales, standards for measurements to arrive at a quality product.
We are processing garbage, we want out outputs to be beautiful and not more trash.
As to their products, Gallares said traditionally these become souvenir items. In Tagbilaran however, they want it to be value adding as raw materials for more expensive items.
Gallares showed a 4 piece framed picture that sold for P35K.
Other ideas from their plastic pressed sheets include lampshades, faux capiz shells, table laminants, architectural interior design highlights to designer bags and limited edition shoes.
Women are giving women here chances of additional income,a nd their labor and creativity do not come cheap, Gallares hinted.
“I think it is not only about having additional income but providing them the idea that they can create, that they can innovate and they can use technology, PRP is a technology based industrial type of manufacturing project only in Tagbilaran City, and these women are owners and managers of their operations.
As this is alternative livelihood, putting a prime value of quality women products would certainly help the poverty sector soon have character, quality of home makers into city makers. This is the positive image of women we want, she demurred.
In their plants, women only work for 6 hours a day, so they too have other roles at home, and they are paid the minimum wage for 25 quality sheets, which would soon be doubled.
Women have reproductive roles, and we gave them the chance of taking care of themselves, their families and the environment by up-cycling plastics.
Selling trash is already a hard sell, and the only way this gets past that is by selling quality, standard and beautiful creations that can be at par with ASEAN products entering the global market.
For now, with still few heat pressed products in the market, Tagbilaran City women may be earning but change, but the bigger change in their mindset could soon make the change they desired, work for them. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
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