trashy bags

How many minutes I have wasted staring at a blank page. Countless hours locked up in Panera, in my basement, in my dorm room waiting for inspiration to strike. I remember the acute frustration from the days when I made time to create. How often we forget that possibility, ingenuity and brilliance dwell in the sidewalk cracks and open gutters of the world around us. This week I got a reminder that the first and foremost step to creativity is simply keeping our eyes open.

Yesterday, I visited a place called "Trashy Bags". This organization was started three years ago by some young people who saw an artistic solution to two of Ghana's major issues: land pollution and unemployment.

Since nearly everything here comes in bags, plastic sachets make up the majority of rubbish- whether casually tossed into a gutter, regretfully discarded as justified by the lack of trash receptacles in close proximity or dumped in the grass with nowhere else to dispose the rest of the wrappers and papers that build up over a week in the life. In Accra, waste produced from plastic packaging is estimated to be more than 60 tons per day. That number is up by 70% in the last ten years with only 2% of the plastic waste being recycled. The oft-ignored 98% colors the urban landscape with the white and pink FanIce wrappers, the warm yellow of Tampico sachets and the translucent blue of Voltic water bags. It is a major cause of the city's frequent floods and greatly increases the risk and spread of disease. Meanwhile, everyday in this developing country, many people shuffle along these littered streets in search of some way to earn a living.

So, a couple people were observant enough to link the issues and to imagine a creative solution. Trashy Bags pays anyone who is willing to pick up sachets off the streets. They are paid by the kilo of trash they bring in. The garbage is then recycled into marketable products including wallets, lunch boxes, and bags of all shapes and sizes.

The manager took us around their workshop as I marveled at the methodical brilliance of the operation. We saw where the sachets are dumped after they're brought in, looking just as crumpled and useless as they do on the side of the road. We saw how they are cleaned and sterilized and then laid out to dry in the sub-saharan sun. The tour concluded in a room full of women clicking away at sewing machines, fashioning the pieces of garbage into colorful, marketable works of art.

It isn't the first idea of its kind. But the humble white building where the assembly line chugs along emanates a messsage of profound simplicity. And it filled me with hope that day. This one small idea has provided 60 people with full-time jobs, hundreds more with compensation for cleaning their city, spread awareness regarding the dangers of land pollution and provided many lucky individuals, including me, with a really cute new purse! Trashy Bags reminds me what we are capable of. It reminds me that when the government elite ignores issues that matter to us, there is more to be done than sit back and complain. I am reminded of the inherent and potential links between seemingly disparate problems. And that beauty can be formed from the ugliest of landscapes. I am determined to keep my eyes pealed, receptive for when inspiration might strike from the lowliest of places. And I am grateful for the reminder of the power in one great idea.