Turning billboards into bags

(CNN) -- Binggirl Clemente has worked in environmental advocacy in the Philippines for the past eight years. Today, she leads a project to recycle old billboards into bags backed by local NGO, the Earth Day Network.

The project also promotes environmental education and funds clean-up projects in the local community. Recently, she spoke with CNN.

CNN: How did you come up with the idea?

Clemente: Last year was the election period in the Philippines and there were a lot of advertising banners and campaign banners actually. It's really proliferating all over the country and since our advocacy is solid waste management, we already started talking about how are we going to address all this waste around us in the country?

Since my business is in the sewing industry, I thought why don't we try to sew it and make it into something. So we got one and tried to sew it, if the needle could go through it and it did. So I said maybe we could try to make something out of it, at first it was purses, and then eventually since it was May, and June is the start of the school year suggested why don't we make school bags out of it for the children in the public schools.

This became a concept in my company, and also be a good corporate social responsibility activity, so we started gathering [the old billboards]. It became a private activity for my company and some of our friends who involved themselves in there. So that's how it started making school bags and giving it away.

CNN: How did it become a community based project?

Clemente: Somebody came to me, an artist, and said, "why are you inverting [the bags], why is it all white?" I said it was because we have a white thing so we can print what we want to say, "manage waste, goodbye garbage". And one more thing is that we don't want the faces of the politicians coming out in the bag! Since we've been sewing, we've been advocating in our environmental group, it's not only about the environment, it's also about poverty alleviation, women empowerment and employment.

So when we started this at just a small scale it just struck my mind why don't we make this as a community based. Instead of us making our bags, why don't we go out there and see if the women who aren't working if they'd like to learn how to sew. Teaching is not our business, sewing is our business, but there is a compatibility. I brought it up in the Earth Day Network program. They said, "yes that is a brilliant idea" It struck me that our priorities are empowerment, employment, poverty alleviation, so that's how we started thinking about it.

CNN: Why do they call Metro Manila the "billboard jungle"?

Clemente: Metro Manila is all about billboards and banners, billboards and banners. There is no standard size, you can go as big as you want or as small as you want. But no one wants to go small, they want big. There is no strict regulation as to where to install the billboards, this makes me sad because I came from that industry; I left 7 years ago. It would be nice to have a practice in one industry where there is a strict regulation, but what happened in the Philippines, especially in Metro Manila, there was no regulation at all.

Everybody can just put up their own structures anywhere for as long as they get approval from the land owner. Then it became cluttering, then people put them side by side, then on top of each other. There are a lot already, but that's not what gave us in concept. It was really the political banners that pushed us to say this is too much.

CNN: What are the greater environmental problems affecting the Philippines?

Clemente: Our problem here in Manila is we just dump our waste, we dump it everywhere. We don't have proper waste management, we have a law, but it's not being strictly followed. What we are doing here with the tarp bag is just one of the many wastes that is being generated in the country. Normally you recycle the paper, bottle and cans you can take back to factory, but these billboards have no factory to return to make a new tarpaulin.

CNN: What's your goal for this project?

Clemente: We're trying to make this whole system as good as we can, so we can set up others in different provinces, so that we will address the waste where it occurs. We are hoping to duplicate this in different provinces, so that every tarpaulin billboard in every province has its own management system, so it doesn't have to go back to Metro Manila to us here.

CNN: Who were you first clients?

Clemente: We wanted to touch base with the corporations who are using tarpaulins as their advertising banners, after they've used the tarpaulins as their advertising banners we want them to send it over to our village where we will make it into bags back for them. It's like buying back their waste and they can use them as their corporate giveaway bags.

CNN: How do you support the local community?

Clemente: These communities are being supported by the proceeds that we've received, we make the bags, the corporations buy them, we make a little profit, then those profits are used to fund all our projects like today and on Sunday, we will be giving away school bags. It didn't come from anybody's money anymore, it came from the money we have already generated, from our own activities.

CNN: What's the message you're trying to say with this project?

Clemente: What we're actually doing is information and we teach and campaign for a clean environment. We are teaching people to manage their waste so it will not create garbage. When you start mixing your waste, it will become garbage, it will be rubbish, but when you segregate it, it will be a resource.

People will have to start thinking that we need to recycle our waste, we don't just have to dump it. That's the main lesson we want to share with the whole world that when you're done with one thing, please don't throw it away, save it, it could be useful to some other people, it could be useful to your future needs. The more you save it, the more you're saving resources, you're saving it for the future needs.

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