How old drink pouches help pull Filipinos out of poverty 
The Universe
(May 29, 2005)
We read much about the different ways of fighting poverty but the one most effective one, in my experience, is creating a 'well-paid, simply made' market for products.
Colourful shopping bags sewn together from recycled foil drink pouches are big sellers in Europe, North America and Australia. The foil pouch is the latest way to deliver and sell drinks in the Philippines, but was an environmental hazard until a recycling project turned them into shopping bags for export, made by the poorest of the poor.
Abandoned mothers, survivors of sexual exploitation, youths rescued from prisons, students, and dozens of waste paper collectors and out-of-work sewers are all are getting fair earnings from the foil drink pouch project.
The recycled pouches are collected, cleaned, sorted and sewn into quality products. They are practically indestructible. Hundreds of poor people are employed and many more are joining the recycling and sewing project.
In the amazing short time of three months, the PREDA Foundation has turned the tables on what was once an environmental hazard. The collection and recycling of these throwaway pouches into valuable products is fast becoming a boon for the poor in Olongapo City and Zambales and a powerful, economical way of cleaning the environment.
It's a friday afternoon at the Olongapo waste dump area. The Preda waste management and purchasing team led by Donard Angeles and Roger Hermogino has just arrived to buy the thousands of collected foil pouches from a very happy group of collectors. They eagerly line up with sacks full of foil pouches they pulled from the piles of waste cardboard and scrap paper and jostle to get to the front of the line joking and laughing all the time.
Anita, a young teenage school drop out, screams with delight when her sack weighs in at ten kilos. She receives a thick wad of money in exchange and then races off to the grocery to buy rice, fish and a week's supply of healthy food that was once only a dream of luxury. Before the project, her food was left-overs from restaurants.
Preciously, the pouches were considered useless and not worth picking up. But now everyone is eagerly snatching them from the rubbish. These are the poorest of the poor are now earning. Each month, Donard pays out 24,000 pesos to these collectors.
Their lives usually teeter on the brink of continual hunger but now they are earning good money every week as they happily tell anyone who asks.
One is Maria, 22, with three children, living in a shack near the dump with her mother. They collected 6,450 pouches in two weeks and earned three times their normal income. Now, they eat good meals everyday and have bought new clothes for the children.
There are now 45 people involved in getting the pouches and sewing them into the products that are a real symbol of fair trade and a commitment to building a socially just world. The project provides electric-driven sewing machines, using a "sew now pay later" system.
At one school I know, thousands of children went around the school collecting the pouches and as a result, the school now earns an average of 44,000 pesos monthly. No wonder the project has the support of the principal and teachers! [End]
