Nine women were standing around the dinner table in the second-floor flat of a small apartment building in Sarita Vihar, armed with pairs of scissors, needles, thread and heaps of cloth. They were doing their bit to help save the environment — by stitching cloth bags.
“Last year, we decided to do something to end the use of polybags in our colony. So, we collected all the scrap cloth we had and stitched them into bags. We then gave them to local vegetable vendors and shopkeepers, to distribute among customers,” said Sunita Palita, one of the women there.
Soon after, they found support from export houses and designer shops, which started donating their surplus fabric to the group.
“We realised if we wanted to take our project further, we would need more than nine people. So each of us invested Rs 5,000. Using the Rs 45,000, we employed many poor women to make bags for us. We paid them Rs 3 per bag,” said Rekha Kanwar, another member.
The group now has a stock of 8,000 bags and has decided to make their colony free of polybags. Their effort has found support from Sambhav, an NGO, and Tata Communications, a corporate house, who have chipped in with funds. “Corporate funding will help create an impact,” Palita said.
{{/usCountry}}The group now has a stock of 8,000 bags and has decided to make their colony free of polybags. Their effort has found support from Sambhav, an NGO, and Tata Communications, a corporate house, who have chipped in with funds. “Corporate funding will help create an impact,” Palita said.
{{/usCountry}}