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Home > Clothing > Recycled Juice Pack Aprons
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Doy Bags are made by a women's cooperative in the Philippines. The large number of bags and household items that they produce every year prevents vast quantities of juice packs from being burnt, buried or simply littering the streets and waterways. The cooperative has won a number of awards in the Philippines for its concern for the environment and its outstanding contribution to both waste recycling and employment generation.
The Cooperative began as an environmental project with the aim of 'cleaning and greening' the local neighbourhood. The project was very successful and their mission expanded into developing 'livelihood opportunities from garbage' - finding ways of creatively reusing materials that would otherwise go into landfill sites and incinerators.
In 1999 the cooperative was formally registered with a workforce of 100 local women, most of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and the main or only breadwinner for their families. Working together with the local council, the women set up a Recycling Centre and started to educate local households to sort their recyclable waste and sell it to the cooperative. Juice packs - colourful, tough and non-biodegradable - were particularly well suited to 'creative recycling' and Doy Bags, now their iconic product, quickly became very popular.
By proving that there can be a livelihood in garbage, they have succeeded where the juice manufactures have failed to even try to make a difference (despite several recent acts of parliament to regulate 'ecological solid wastes' in the Philippines).
Doy's mission is now both environmental and social as they work to improve the lives of local women by creating long-term sustainable employment - providing not only fair and regular wages, but also the skills and dignity that a proper job brings.
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