Trashy Bags

Our little family will be moving back to the States, Lord willing, in late September of this year. Before our return, we have a short list of things we want to do or places we'd like to visit. The richness of living in another culture won't be ours for long and we want to take advantage of it while we can. 

One of the places I wanted to see was Trashy Bags, a small business that recycles plastic water sachets, billboards, and fabric scraps by turning them into purses, laptop bags, and more.

Water sachets, by the way, are sold all over cities and larger towns as purified water-to-go. The downside to this convenience is all the plastic left behind. Cheers, then, to creative recycling businesses such as Trashy Bags.

Even the baby loves drinking from
these sachets. 

I was happy to find a sleeve for my Kindle. They had one made from heavy canvas billboard material. It is strong enough and my Kindle feels secure enough that I think I could drop it from any bridge or building and retrieve it unharmed -a fitting defense for a library of much-loved books. 

Trashy Bags took us on a tour through their factory. Water sachets are sewn into strips and those strips into squares. 

One seamstress sewed zippers onto sachets in an unbroken string. 

Another woman does nothing but sews endless strings of handles. All the parts were then taken to two tailors who sewed reusable shopping bags, ones that can be folded and zipped into a small rectangle for convenient storage. 

The finished product. She is holding
an opened bag; the same bags are
displayed behind her, zipped closed.

 The bags that really caught my eye, though, were the ones made out of fabric scraps collected from seamstresses. The quilt-patch bags are stiff because they are lined with billboard canvas. 

"Our products are made from 90% recycled materials," our guide told us. "The zippers are new, the thread is new, and sometimes we use new fabric to line things like Kindle sleeves." 

Sophia summed it up pretty well by saying, "I think Ghanaians are so creative. They can take trash and turn it into something that is not trash." 

Wanna go shopping?