Craftswomen Weave a Better Future Out of Recycled Garbage
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MEXICO CITY, Aug 2, 2010 (IPS) - Women's laughter fills the rectangular room on the ground floor of a building that houses a school for 250 local children, on the southern edge of Mexico City's sprawling metropolitan area.
The room seems too small to contain the two dozen women busy cutting and folding strips of plastic laminated paper recovered from discarded food wrappers. The strips will later be plaited using a traditional palm-leaf weaving technique passed down by the Nahua people.
The women run a craft centre that is part of the local cooperative "Mitz" (a Nahuatl word that means "For you"), where they use recycled material to make bags, coin purses, date books, picture frames, Christmas decorations and accessories, having achieved a monthly production of about 3,000 craft items.