Bag Lady

Written by Caroline / 08 April 2009 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

My friends have always called me a bag lady, as I have too many bags on me at any given time (and I have an awful habit of losing at least one!). But when you're carrying bags you really believe in, I don't mind having so many. I've starting carrying a purse made of reused plastic bags, pulled from landfills and drains in Ahmedabad, cleaned and woven by women who now have a viable and self-sustaining  livelihood. The rest of our climate solutions are now stuffed into another Darpana bag that we carried across Kerala, showcasing the technology to students and entrepreneurs, hoping to replicate the model here as well.

Plastic waste is one of the biggest pollutants to Indian cities, literally choking our cities by clogging rainwater drains causing flooding in the rains, killing cows and other animals that consume them, polluting our streets and parks, and releasing toxic carcinogens when burned after collection.

Of course, there are amazing point source solutions. We've been happily distributing Small Steps bags as we travelled across India, small cloth bags woven by women in Tamil Nadu whose families' livelihoods were destroyed along with the coral reefs and their homes during the tsunami. The bags fit in a pocket or purse so are easy to remember and yet unfold to fit a full weeks' worth of groceries!

Cities and governments are starting to ban plastic bags all across India and around the world. Delhi has begun enforcing this ban, fining vendors and patrons using plastic bags. But even if every city were to ban every new use of plastic bags, we'd have millions of bags still clogging our cities. Ragpickers have very little incentive to collect plastic bags as they are a low cost and high labor product to collect. At best, plastic bags earn 6 Rs a kilo to be melted down into road surfaces or into plastic chairs (either way releasing severly toxic fumes). There are alternatives.

Conserve, an NGO in Delhi, has begun making bags out of plastic and newspaper, melting both into beautiful purses and handbags. Several years ago, the Center for Environment Education developed the technology to be weaving plastic bags into rugs and bags but Mallika Sarabhai and her team of designers took this to the next level of creating high end eco-products for a national and international audience. These bags are creating livelihood and income out of "useless" waste products in the prime example of industrial ecology.

Ecosystems operate in a cyclical system with no loss -- every organisms waste is the food to another. We cannot survive in a world of linear flows -- with more energy pouring into creating plastic and leaving it as detrimental waste. I hope we will reach a point of eliminating our need for the products without an easy waste stream (like plastic) but also find ways to bring new life to old products. May the bag ladies be the beginning!