KURE for the environment
one plastic sheet at time
In times when coastal clean-ups report sacks upon sacks of plastic garbage lifted out from the sea, the shores and near households, members of the Kalipunan ng Liping Pilipina (KALIPI) Tagbilaran City are taking matters in their own hands.
Composed of solo parents, battered women, women with physical difficulties, plain housewives and unemployed or underemployed women also threatened by the wanton disregard of people in discarding plastics, the group of 225 women decided to be part of the solution by venturing out into a livelihood from collected garbage.
Seeing the scattered plastic bags not just as eyesores littering in our streets and communities, we looked for ways these can be recycled or repurposed to give these a new lease in life, shares Rowena Bernales, who was experimenting repurposing dried leaves into decorative materials then.
Bernales, who was unemployed from Cogon District said anything she could do to help beef up the family income would be fair game.
It was simple and it was something that women would naturally do: keep plastic bags after using them, pick up those that they can find littering their communities and wash those that have dirt in them so they could be snipped into tiny strips to be later heat-pressed.
“In was in February of 2018, when the Plastic Recycling Project for Increased Women’s Income (PRP4IWI) introduced a non-conventional recycling project through innovation and technology to start off livelihood and improve lives of families,” Erickson Nangkil, product designer helping the women recalled.
With tons upon tons of plastic bags discarded every day, the challenge is even bigger in Tagbilaran: the gateway for tourists coming to Bohol.
What to do with the plastic and how technology and innovation can be used was another challenge, however, in partnership with Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Education and the City Government, the idea of heat pressing was presented by a Japanese volunteer Chrisato Kanno.
The next challenge was how to digitally fabricate a heat-press.
That time, another Japanese volunteer Shiro Takaki designed the heat-press machine which they fabricated locally.
It was a heavy machine, but it worked in such a way that the plastic strips we laid out for the press finally stuck, the colors remained and the texture hardly noticeable, Berlie Reyes, KALIPI Federation President recalled, happy that they had finally found the right heat-press setting to produce what they envisioned as plastic sheets from plastic bag strips.
These strips were laid in a discarded tarpaulin, and pressed into plastic sheets as raw materials for new products.
Women, over 200 of them has tasks to do for the day: others were to simply pick and gather plastic bags, sort them into the same colors, wash them, dry and then straighten the creases so they can be easily snipped into strips when dried.
These sorted plastic bags are sent to their fabrication shop where another group of women snip these into thin strips.
And then another group gather these strips, arrange them according to their desired colors and ready them for the heat press.
Still another group of women manhandle the equipment, making sure they get the proper fit, temperatures and settings which can ultimately determine the thickness of the plastic sheet by-product.
This we did for over a year without pay, everyone volunteering and giving out their free time, shares Reyes, who was also marveled at the therapeutic effect of women working out in groups and sharing their life stories.
“Until now, we could not fully describe how happy we were when we had the first sheet coming off the press,” Bernales recalls, the memory still freshly imprinted in her glittering eyes.
In its sheer form, the pressed plastic comes in 12 x 14 inches, A2 sized, with specific thickness, and an option for glossy, matte or textured finish.
These are then the raw materials alternative to acrylic plates, countertop laminates, fake capiz shell sheen for a variety of home and fashion applications.
From these tarpaulin-backed pressed sheets come bags in many forms: totes, backpacks, school bags, ID and passport holders, wallets, billfolds, purses, keychains, bracelets. Table coasters, mouse pads, slippers, home accents and wall decors including lampshades.
Now organized as Kalipi Upcycling Resource Entrepreneurs (KURE), creating livelihood from upcycling waste plastic bags and discards is their way of reinventing plastic bags into sheets and making somebody’s home beautiful using practically somebody’s trash.
Now presenting a creative solution to the growing concern for plastic waste which takes almost an eternity to decompose and has started filling the ocean and the world’s biggest resource.
Most of these women desire to have financial freedom, something they can call as their own earning contributing to the family table, but they were never given the chance to do while working full time as housewives. Here, we wanted to achieve our goals environment, empowerment and employment, said Ellen Grace Gallares, PRP4IWI consultant.
And while stories of people living off the garbage gets a fair share of media exposure, KURE women continue to snip the edges of the trash issue, into strips, to be heat pressed and give the ugly crumpled non-biodegradable plastic another chance of a beautiful life.
And as they say, for every purchase of a KURE product, a kilo of plastic is saved from choking the ocean. Or something like that. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
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