A community based artisan workshop that creates hand made, earth-friendly products from recycle. Photo:ChuChuYangon
MARCH 5th 2020
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
Turning Garbage into Products in Myanmar
There are issues concerning garbage all over the world. More than 8 million tonnes of plastic get dumped into the oceans on a yearly basis, millions of plastic bags see little in terms of reuse, and not a lot is done about it. While there are few solutions to date that have helped the crisis, there are some in Myanmar who have ideas.
According to the governments of Southeast Asia, over 2,500 tonnes of garbage, varying from unrecycled plastics to tin cans and scrap, are being thrown out every single day. This is all accomplished by the mass population of 5 million in the city of Yangon, living and working in the region. What with the rapid urbanisation of the region, it’s difficult for city services to keep up with cleaning much of the waste. A lot of the time, it ends up polluting the roads and landfills. Some consider burning their garbage to be the solution – something that’s done frequently in the city by now. However, this is known to contribute greatly to the region’s poor air quality.
The region’s air quality is amongst the worst in the world, and it doesn’t provide a healthy place for anyone to grow. This is what inspired 68-year-old Wendy Neampui to do something about the problem, prompting her to begin her own business which deals in scavenging the garbage and reusing it in helpful ways.
ChuChu Design, Neampui’s business, founded in 2014 with the assistance of Cesvi -a non-profit Italian organisation- was born as such, and has thus had its single-story headquarters built almost entirely out of recycled garbage, Reuters reports. With walls shaped from reused plastic bottles, and a roof put together from old, disused tyres, Neampui’s organisation has proven that the very garbage that pollutes the world and has ‘nowhere to go’ makes for a very comfortable working and living environment.
ChuChu Workshop in Yangon, Myanmar
They don’t stop there, however. ChuChu -Burmese for ‘Plastic House’- Designs employ a wide range of talented craftsmen, all of whom work to make scavenged garbage into useful everyday items. From empty bags of crisps becoming wallets and pockets, to old tyres becoming belts, there are few things they don’t reuse.
"The customers may think that the items come from trash,” said Neampui. “So, we have to try hard to attract the customers to feel that they are valuable products. It is really hard work and challenging for us."
Most of the products end up in souvenir shops, where tourists are most often found purchasing them, seeing as the majority of the city’s citizens find it difficult to see any value in the recycled items past their prior roles as garbage. However, while her goal is noble, she doesn’t believe this business alone can do much to change the status of Myanmar’s garbage problems. It’s in influencing people that she hopes to put more attention to the crisis at hand.
“Our project … is not only to work on making beautiful things from trash, but also to educate people that trash can be a decoration in the home,” she said. While it is no easy solution, she believes that by keeping at it, she could at least spark a change in attitude towards garbage and how it’s treated. “With this technique, I can help save the environment and earn a living. That is my ambition.”
A German tourist in the city told Reuters "I think this is a great project just to see how you can reuse all the materials that are just thrown away nowadays and you can reuse them and create something great and magical just as this elephant for example, which I really love and it’s a really great souvenir."
Wendy Neampui continues her work to this day, and intends to continue it whilst maintaining a job on the side where she teaches a class of women how to turn waste and garbage into something anyone could find a use for.
By Patryk Krych | The World Daily
