Trash to trendy

Combine one woman’s passion for the environment with another’s desire to help developing communities and what do you get? Funky handbags made from recycled rubbish, with the proceeds filtering back to those in need. Rebecka Delforce reports.

Sometimes the important thing is just to start. Leave out the ‘whys’ and ‘what-ifs’ and just put your ideas into action. At least, that’s what administrator for the Australian Human Rights Centre Amber Rowe, 31, and design educator Mitra Gusheh, 33, discovered when they began importing and selling hip handbags made from recycled rubbish. In just months their dream business – the aptly named Trashbags – was up and running, helping to fund the developing communities that create the handbags and thereby improving those communities’ livelihoods and environmental sustainability.

When Amber, a one-time environmental activist, stood atop a pile of rubbish in Manila in September 2004, her values and life goals crystallised. Amber had been working in the Philippines under a 12-month Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD) program whereby skilled Australian volunteers carry out short-term assignments in developing countries. “I was writing about water catchments for a local environmental centre, and began contacting non-government organisations and environmental groups for advice. One group I contacted was the Smokey Mountain Livelihood Center. I took a trip out there and couldn’t believe what I saw.”

Visiting Smokey Mountain is, to be sure, a mind-blowing experience. Firstly, it has never been a real mountain. It was a peaceful fishing village on Manila Bay until 1954, when the burgeoning city of Manila began dumping its rubbish there. Over time, a mountain was created: a 10-storey-high, 40-hectare pile of rubbish that, due to noxious chemicals dumped by local industry, smoked consistently. It was a human and ecological disaster – and the members of the once-thriving fishing community were forced to live in and around the dumpsite, scavenging piles of disease-ridden waste for mildly operational junk they could perhaps sell to second-hand stores. Lives were lost regularly to garbage cave-ins and ill health, and the child mortality rate escalated. Then, in 1983, a local Filipino priest began working with the community to improve their living conditions. The result was the establishment of the Smokey Mountain Livelihood Center, a community-run organisation that collects old telephone books and newspapers from offices and weaves and varnishes them into stylish, durable handbags.

As the community members showed Amber their craft, her mind raced. “One minute I was looking at the bags thinking, ‘I like these: I’ll take some home for friends’. Then I was thinking, ‘actually, most Australians would like these. Well, no – they’d think they were kitsch – but if we made some slight changes...’ Also, I was inspired by these people living in dire circumstances, yet having so much respect for themselves and their environment. I thought: ‘This is an amalgamation of all the things that are important to me. Clearly I should do this. I must do this!’” Emotions whirling, Amber bought 30 bags on the spot. Arriving home to Lismore, New South Wales six months later, she almost choked upon receiving the postage bill. “I didn’t know about shipping then,” she says, “so I had them airmailed. It cost as much as the bags!”

An expensive little foray into the world of philanthropy, but Amber didn’t mind – things were working out. “I talked to Dad, who for thirty years owned and operated Noah’s Arc, a gift store in Lismore, and he said, ‘Why don’t you try and do something more? We’ll take some into the shop’. I thought if he’s going to take some, maybe other retailers would buy them.”

So in April 2005, Amber named the fledgling business Recycled, offloaded 10 bags to her obliging father, and hit the local markets. “I really didn’t know what I was doing,” she admits. “I knew the bags stood out – not just because they were made from recycled materials but also because they had a great story behind them – but I wasn’t explaining that to people properly. I didn’t have a business plan and had absolutely no money. Basically, I was just waiting to sell the first shipment so I could order the next!”

Even so, the bags were selling steadily and Amber began anticipating a second shipment. She’d heard about another livelihood community project in Ugong, Manila that involved a women’s cooperative making handbags from recycled juice packs. Upon mentioning it to Mitra, a long-time friend from their uni days in the early ‘90s, Amber found a compassionate ear. Mitra had just returned from a year-long post in Nepal through the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program, where she too had been working with and was inspired by developing communities. “My passion was community work; Amber’s was the environment,” says Mitra. “But we could see both areas were interlinked.”

“At some point,” adds Amber, “Mitra talked about an idea she’d been storing: she wanted to work with developing communities, designing products they’d make and she’d import and sell in Australia. I said, ‘I’m working with recycled materials – that’s what I’m doing!’”

The girls’ conversations became more fervent. “We kept coming back to the fact we needed to do some research: we definitely wanted to design bags for Smokey Mountain Livelihood Center to make, but they needed to be affordable. Intentionally we were there, but financially, we weren’t sure. So as part of this research, we emailed Smokey Mountain asking how much it would cost for them to make us forty bags.” For weeks, the girls awaited a reply. Then, one morning in June 2005, Mitra received one. “It read: ‘Hi, it’s ready to collect, please deposit 80,000 Filipino pesos [$2,110] into our account’,” says Mitra. “Finally, we got why it had taken so long: they’d actually been making the bags. Combining our savings, we just had enough to cover the bill. So our first order was a mistake!” Yet a more compelling motivator would be hard to find: “Suddenly we had to get things happening.”

“We decided the name Recycled had to go, and came up with Trashbags,” says Amber. “We loved it: the idea of trashy over-consumption heading towards a new age in fashion – an environmentally sustainable and socially conscious one.”

A website also had to go up. “Amber wrote it and I designed it,” says Mitra. Then there was the trifling matter of a business plan. Booking herself into a 12-week small-business course, Amber wrote the Trashbags business plan as part of her final assessment. “It was a great exercise,” she says. “It helped me see we could make this happen, despite having very little money: we just needed to grow slowly.”

Growing slowly meant not rushing out trying to convince retailers to stock the product.  “We wanted to be able to ensure a constant supply,” says Amber, “So we decided to stick with the markets for a while: I did the north coast of New South Wales while Mitra took on Balmain in Sydney.”

But according to Mitra there was another issue at stake. “We’d always agreed some of the bags needed design tweaks,” she says. “When we got the first ‘accidental’ shipment in August 2005, we liked the bags but they weren’t exactly what they needed to be, so we didn’t feel comfortable asking shops to stock them.”

No problem: market sales were booming and the girls were soon discussing design changes they’d make for their next order from Smokey Mountain, and first order from the Ugong Women’s Cooperative. “We’d discuss it,” says Mitra, “then Amber would draw up designs and we’d email them over. I’d scan our sketches in, detailing the measurements, then something would go horrendously wrong in the translation and we’d get these crazy samples and stare at them thinking, ‘We didn’t mean metres; we meant centimetres!’”

Lessons were learned, but some things came naturally. “One really lucky thing,” says Mitra, “is that Amber’s and my tastes are polar opposites: I like clean, simple colours and fabrics, minimal patterns, whereas Amber likes bold patterns, bright colours and dramatic designs. My designs result in bags you throw over your shoulder and forget, like our Rejuiced Satchel, while Amber is really into holding her bags: the Paper Trail Evening Stroll clutch is her design. At first, we’d think, ‘Well, which do we go ahead with?’ Now we just order both. The things I love, she hates and vice versa, so we have a very wide range, which seems to be working for us!”

To date, the girls have sold more than 500 bags and homeware items. Most have been snapped up by market-goers, but now that the girls are happy with their current shipments, including redesigned bags that arrive in perfect proportions, they’ve managed to convince 13 retailers to jump on board – a number that continues to grow. “I’ve been cold-calling,” says Amber. “I ring retailers, ask if they’d be interested in our stock, then send the email catalogue of our range – email, because we run a paperless office for environmental sustainability. I schedule an appointment to show the range, and then they’ll usually buy.”

In the bag

If you’re in the market for a new purse, satchel, clutch, shoulder bag, grocery tote, evening bag – or even an esky (like those pictured right) – make your purchase one that provides positive flow-on social and environmental effects by buying from Trashbags.

For more information, visit www.trashbags.com.au.

Recycling down-under

Of the countries linked to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Australia is second only to the USA in per-capita waste production. In fact, we create a huge 1.2 tonnes of garbage per person, per year.

Here are just a few suggestions from Planet Ark on how to reduce your personal impact:

• When you put items in your recycling bin, don’t put them in a plastic bag. Don’t put oven-proof glass, drinking glasses or ceramic mugs in your bin either. Just 25g of oven-proof glass can contaminate one tonne of normal glass, making it useless for recycling.
• All types of printer cartridges are now recyclable, so visit www.recyclingnearyou.com.au/cartridges.html to find out where you can recycle them in your area.

Words: Rebecka Delforce. Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & make-up: Yolanda Lukowski.