From rubbish to riches
01.01.2008
Fr Cullen tells us about how throwaway drink pouches are transformed into beautiful bags.
The foil fruit drink pouch is the latest way to deliver and sell drinks in the Philippines. They are fast replacing bottled drinks as the most popular school drink. These pouches are also an environmental hazard.
That is until the PREDA* recycling project turned the hundreds of thousands of throwaway aluminium foil pouches into raw material for lucrative livelihood projects for abandoned mothers, survivors of sexual exploitation, youth rescued from prisons, students, and dozens of waste paper collectors. All are getting a piece of the foil pouch project which recycles the pouches into quality, well-crafted shopping bags, backpacks, wallets, hats and other attractive colourful and useful items.
The tough pouches are hardwearing and practically indestructible. They have bright colourful pictures of various fruits and make attractive products throughout the Fair Trading world shops of Europe and Australia. Hundreds of poor people are employed and many more are joining the great recycling and sewing project.
On a Friday afternoon at the Olongapo waste dump area the PREDA* waste management and purchasing team led by Donard Angeles and Roger Hermogino arrive to buy the thousands of collected foil pouches from a happy group of collectors. They eagerly line up with sacks full of foil pouches they pulled from the piles of waste cardboard and scrap paper and jostle to get to the front of the line joking and laughing all the time.
Their lives usually teeter on the brink of continual hunger but now they are earning good money every week as they happily tell anyone who asks.
One is Maria, 22, with three children, living in a shack near the dumpsite with her mother. They gather waste paper and junk on the dump. They hardly had enough to eat and lived day by day in hope of finding something valuable in the dump - there was nothing until they heard PREDA* was buying the discarded drink pouches. Previously they had no value now they are like little grains of gold there for the picking.
Maria and her aged mother found the energy and started hurrying around here and there picking up as many as possible in the shortest time. Maria and her mother collected 6,450 pouches in two weeks and earned three times their normal income. Now, they eat good meals everyday and have bought new clothes for the children.
Maria, speaking in Filipino, told the PREDA* social worker, "Before collecting the foil pouches and selling them to PREDA*, we were almost starving, I looked for food in the dump site. We are too weak to collect the valuable wastes like the metal scraps. The men push us out. But now they can't stop us collecting the foil pouches. We get well paid, we are happy now," she said, laughing and holding up the pouches she collected.
The foil pouches have to be carefully washed and sanitised. The youth in the PREDA* Recovery Home for exploited and abused girls clean the pouches and earn a pocket full of pesos. They are so happy to have a chance to earn pocket money that there is strong competition to get the most bags to clean. Earning and spending their own money increases their self-esteem and confidence in their abilities. Some have learned to sew and they are earning even more as they create useful products that sell like hot cakes.
The sanitised and cleaned pouches are then given to the growing army of eager home-based sewers. Some are abandoned wives with hungry children. Others are recovering youth exploited in the sex industry. Some are skilled sewers out of work. They turn the foil pouches into bright, attractive carrier bags, sun hats, backpacks and wallets.
The adult sewers are working in their own homes; they work in their spare time and the most skilled sewers can earn as much as 500 pesos (AUD$14) a day. That is very good money considering that the average daily wage for a skilled workingman in the Philippines is about 300 pesos (AUD$9). All the bags and backpacks are then delivered to the Fair Trade warehouse where they are checked for quality and then packed and shipped to Germany, Austria and Australia. There are some importers so eager to have them they airfreight them monthly to Europe, a high tribute to the skill and quality of the Philippine sewers.
From the earnings, there is a fund to buy electric sewing machines for new applicants to the sewing circles. Each can have their own sewing machine at a low cost on a "sew now, pay later" basis. After six weeks of easy repayments from their earnings, they own their own machines.
Angelina is the mother of three-year-old Rosalie. She was a frail wasted woman trying to feed an emaciated child. Now Angelina and many more like her are earning from collecting the pouches. Today she has gained weight and energy and goes about the dumpsite filling a plastic sack with the discarded fruit drink pouches. From a once beaten down woman she is now laughing, joking and full of fun when payday arrives and she has lots of foil pouches to sell. What a transformation from a skeletal famine-like victim to a cheerful, well-fed mother.
What more can I say to you but "Come and see how a simple project of recycling throwaway materials and turning them into useful saleable items is changing the lives of many poor people. Buy a shopping bag today and help reduce poverty through PREDA* Fair Trade."
Fr Shay Cullen has been a missionary in the Philippines since 1969.
For more information on PREDA* see http://www.preda.org . or PREDA* Fair trade see http://www.preda.net/
*PREDA - (People's Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance Foundation) is dedicated to changing the unjust structures in society that oppress, exploit and deny justice and human rights to women and children.
Fr Shay Cullen has been a missionary in the Philippines since 1969 and is the Director of Preda.
