Smart intensifies recycling program

MANILA, Philippines - Residents of the PLDT-Smart Amazing Gawad Kalinga (GK) Village in Sooc, Iloilo recently received additional training to improve and increase the marketability of the bags that they are producing from used PLDT and Smart tarpaulin material.

The training program was organized by Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) in partnership with iServe, an Iloilo-based private volunteer organization. Participants were taught how to add accents to the tarpaulin bags using available recycled materials such as scrap cloth, extra buttons and other recyclable materials.

“We encouraged the GK Sook residents to be creative and to make their tarpaulin bags more attractive to prospective buyers,” said iServe president Mazel Jeongco. “We also asked them to always consider using recycled materials for the bag accents so that the finished product is made of purely recycled materials.”

The training is part of a tarpaulin recycling project that Smart initiated at the GK Village in Iloilo to give residents an additional means of livelihood.

Early this year, GK Sooc residents, under the tutelage of environmental organization Earth Day Network Philippines Inc. (EDNPI), learned how to make school bags, tote and grocery bags, and utility cases from PLDT and Smart tarpaulins used for billboard advertisements.

They got their first order of tarp bags last summer when Smart asked for 800 school bags to give to public school children enrolled in Read-to-be-Smart, its employee-initiated summer reading program.

The training on tarpaulin bag-making was an offshoot of a solid waste management workshop that EDNPI conducted among GK Sooc residents. The implementation of a sustainable zero waste management system in GK Villages is being pursued as part of GK’s Green Kalinga Program.