Al Jazeera Online

At a time when the world is grappling with staggering amounts of plastic waste and its environmental ramifications, a woman in India’s northeastern state of Assam has hit upon a novel idea to address the problem while also helping poor women earn a livelihood from it.

Rupjyoti Saikia Gogoi, 47, lives in the vicinity of Kaziranga National Park, a major tourist attraction in Assam and home to the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinoceros, besides thousands of elephants, tigers, panthers, bears and exotic bird species.

In 1985, the national park was inscribed in the UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Gogi and women from her collective, called Village Weaves, gather the waste – plastic bottles, packets of chips and water bottles – left behind by the tourists, wash and dry it manually and create handloom products like handbags, doormats, table mats, wall hangings, coasters, table covers, tea cosies, runners and other items from it.

Launched in 2004, the enterprise has helped empower more than 2,300 women across 35 villages in Assam so far while also whittling down plastic pollution around the national park.

“Kaziranga is visited by millions of tourists each year, many of who leave behind heaps of garbage,” says Gogoi.

“Despite a ban on littering, there are plastic bags everywhere which are not only an eyesore but also hazardous for animals who choke on them.”

Gogoi’s husband Binod works for a local wildlife conservation non-profit and shares her concern about the threat of plastic waste to the environment and animals. The couple say they discussed the problem and “came up with a solution that was three-pronged – to tackle the waste, recycle it in an eco-friendly manner and empower local women”.

Gogoi says she experimented for months before she stumbled upon a workable plan to use the waste creatively.

“At first, I tried using just plastic to make different objects from it. But it didn’t work. I then experimented with other types of materials. Finally, it was only after I mixed plastic with cotton threads that I was able to create a durable and pliant fabric that was ideal for creating craft products,” she says.

Gogoi says she followed simple handloom techniques she had learnt from her mother.

“Handloom weaving is a very common skill among Assamese women, especially in villages. We are trained in this craft from the age of six-seven and most households have a loom made by the ladies,” she explains.

Once the technique was perfected, the self-taught artisan started sharing her knowledge with other women in Bocha Gaon village in the Golaghat district. Word spread and soon hundreds of women joined her network, making it a vibrant, statewide operation within a year.