Kaziranga Woman turns Plastic litter into Traditional Handloom !

From the sunny beaches of Goa to the mighty Himalayas, tourist destinations across the country have one thing in common — the generation of plastic waste. Kaziranga — a world heritage site in Assam, home to the rare one-horned Rhinoceros — is no different. The national park sees an immeasurable amount of discarded plastic waste including bottles, bags, and food wrappers.

Using an innovative approach to tackle this, Rupjyoti Saikia Gogoi (47), a native of the area, collects this waste and weaves it in traditional handlooms to make handbags, doormats, table mats, and other furnishing products. She has also trained thousands of women in upcycling the waste, which has helped them earn a livelihood.

Rupjyoti, along with a few other women, started by collecting plastic covers thrown around the lanes surrounding their neighbourhood. Once they collected enough, the waste was washed and dried thoroughly. The bags were then cut into strips using a pair of scissors, and tied by hand from end-to-end to make one long thread.

On a traditional handloom, the cotton thread is woven in the vertical direction, and horizontal weaves are made using the plastic thread. “We use all kinds of plastic covers and wrappers to weave. This gives the product a colourful finish, and makes it durable,” says Rupjyoti.

Once the method proved to be successful, she taught it to a few other women. Together, they would sell the products to tourists, some of whom would be intrigued and ask to visit the handloom to see how the products were woven.

In 2012, Rupjyoti set up a sales outlet named Kaziranga Haat, where the products were showcased so tourists could browse through them before purchasing.

To date, Rupjyoti has taken this method of weaving plastic across 35 villages in Assam, and has trained over 2,000 women. While all of them have a primitive loom set up in their premises, some send the finished products over to Rupjyoti to be sold through Kaziranga Haat.

“Most women have set up their own businesses. But some of them do not have the skills to speak with tourists and make a sale. In those cases, I help them through Kaziranga Haat. During the tourist season, women in my network earn up to Rs 25,000 per month,” says Rupjyoti.

Reference: The Better India