Turning trash to cash with some dash

Who doesn’t know what a tetra pak is? For a lot of harried urbanites, it’s a wonderful little invention as it can keep its contents fresh for months without refrigeration. But unfortunately, you see these ubiquitous little packs ending up in overflowing waste bins and eventually, in landfills to add to the worsening problem of global warming.

After drinking your juice, for instance, you simply throw away the tetra pak, right? Before you toss it into the bin, wouldn’t you like to know what that tetra pak is made of?

Well, tetra pak is made of  paperboard,  a supposedly renewable raw material from wood; polyethylene to protect the product from external moisture, and aluminum foil.  

Happily, there are places where these tetra paks get another lease on life. Like in North America, where these are repurposed into toilet paper, or in India, where the paper component is recycled back into paper products and notebooks while the polyethylene and aluminum contents are recycled  into roofing sheets.

Note that one down-to-earth consumer thought it would be good (for Mother Earth) if someone could come up with a smart packaging that would allow its valuable resources to be recovered and reused.

Here’s what one eco-savvy consumer suggests:

• Buy only a tetra pak when you really have to; otherwise, stick to the perishable items. 

• Separate them from your ordinary garbage and find new use for them. Like they can be used as garden pots.

Our grassroots women are going to pot (literally now) to turn trash to cash with some dash, putting their creativity and discards to good use.

With their deft little hands, they’re creating fabulous decorative and functional products from things that would otherwise have just been discarded.

EcoWaste Coalition notes that “women recyclers are turning juice packs, condiments sachets, flour bags, rice sacks, fabric scraps, advertising banners, plastic sando bags, drinking straws, magazines, newspapers, and Yellow Pages into a wide selection of carry, shopping, and school bags, and other functional items such as purses, baskets, letter holders, photo frames, and shoe organizers, as well as converting cereal boxes, milk cartons and glossy periodicals into bracelets, earrings, and other accessories.”

Now, that’s a lot of cash from so much trash!

The patience and creativity (tons and tons of ’em) of these women recyclers are “saving used containers and packaging materials from being burned, dumped or landfilled, which can badly affect the surroundings.”

More than that, this inspiring recycling initiative is helping empower a disadvantaged group of community women. They simply work from home or in simple workshops through the help of cooperatives that have become training grounds for these women recyclers turned eco-entrepreneurs.

For instance, there’s Buklod Tao based in a barangay in San Mateo, Rizal that was devastated by killer typhoon Ondoy. Here, women members of the community keep their hands busy turning discarded juice tetra paks into “tetra pots” or containers for urban container gardening. While diminishing waste, this helps put food on the table and augment the family income, thus fighting hunger and poverty.

Lyn Ramos, secretary of Buklod Tao, relates that the materials are collected by “tetra pickers” — mothers, janitors, and school children — from funeral wakes, cemetery burial rites, schools, and surroundings. These are then sorted and made by women sewers intro tetra pots which can earn as much as P4,000 per month (the tetra pots are sold for P10 per piece).

In Nueva Ecija, there’s the Krusada sa Kalikasan supporting the Kalikasan Novelty Products made by handicapped women. These very able disabled women churn out quality native and recycled items like bead crafts from candy and snack wrappers.

Other recycling-based micro-enterprises worth mentioning are the Kilus Foundation in Ugong, Pasig City, the Rags2Riches project in Payatas, Quezon City, the Invisible Sisters composed of housewives and grandmas from the urban poor communities in Metro Manila, the ABS-CBN Foundation’s Bayan ni Juan Project in Calauan, Laguna, and the Women’s Multipurpose Cooperative in Baguio City. The list goes on and on.

Now you know what on earth is keeping some of our grassroots women really busy.