The daily newspaper
delivered at your doorstep every morning holds its value for a few hours of
that day. When the day is over, the newspaper is trashed to an unused remote
corner or shelf of your house. Without going into the details of the effort
that went to generate that quantity of news in a newspaper, do we realize the
huge quantity of newspaper trash that is created in every household of a city
or town? If we multiply the amount into the average number of cities in a state
and then number of states in our country, it amounts to tons of newspaper in a
day and, once the day has passed, the monetary value of that amount of paper is
nearly zero.
ACT has tapped this
immense potential of creating something useful out of this easily available,
inexpensive and unlimited trash. The biggest motivation is that ACT will have a
continuous supply of this resource material. Therefore the issue of resource crunch
does not exist. ACT has worked to harness the concept of upcycling the
newspapers.
Why upcycling?
Because it is superior than recycling by several
ways: cost effective, leaves no carbon footprint, no additional machinery
needed. Recycling involves processing the resource material further to produce
a product. The processing may involve adding more material or using a machine and electricity, thereby inviting considerable expense in the recycling
process.
Upcycling means reusing the resource material in an innovative way to
produce a purposeful product that is more valuable than the original material.
ACT decided to upcycle newspaper to create eco-friendly and useful household
products. Imagine the newspaper trash lying in your corner shelf transforming
into a beautiful tea table, a wall clock, a pen holder, a table runner, a flower
vase, natural jewellery and many more beautiful artifacts. Isn’t this creative
magic? ACT has made that true for you.
A group of professional designers train the rural
women members of ACT. A few women are also explicitly groomed into master
trainers. The master trainers are instrumental into bringing in more villages
into this effort of upcycling newspaper.
The
process starts with designing the end product, collection
of newspapers, sorting the papers,
cutting them precisely, and using the techniques of folding, quilling, coiling and weaving papers to form the framework of the product.
Glue is used to make the products strong and sturdy. Then the paper objects
are assembled together to form the final product. Several variations are given
to the products by means of color, varnish, shades, and sizes.
The ACT team is constantly working to enhance the
look and quality of the products. The criteria of this quality assurance
process are to maintain a high standard for the aesthetics and usability of the
products. Customer feedback plays a vital role in forming the standards. The catalogue is expanded on a regular basis. The latest addition to the group of
stationary products is pens, pencils, and notebooks. ACT aspires to have an
eco-friendly substitute of any household product you name.
Through this initiative and the brand name of the upcycled paper products called Paper Wings, ACT has created a win-win situation for all: Training rural women to upcycle newspaper into useful household products to generate
their livelihood and consequently ACT's commitment towards environmental upkeep
and sustenance is also fulfilled.
ACT’s products are sold at various avenues. It all
started through word of mouth and today these products are very popular among ACT’s friends
and well-wishers. Today ACT has grown to produce bulk orders for fairs,
exhibitions, corporate conferences, stores, hotels, and airports.
The creators, our very own rural women crafters, have found a way to generate sustainable income from
these bulk orders.
The other avenues of livelihood are: The master
trainers earn by imparting training to other villages, conducting workshops for
schools, corporates and other platforms on
upcycling and generating awareness about embracing the upcycled products.
In
conclusion, ACT products showcase the concept of upcycling to generate
sustainable livelihood in an environment-friendly manner.
