The
world is blighted by many man-made products, momentarily useful
then discarded, leaving a dirty scar on the land or sea. It
is often the poorest parts of the world that suffer the worst
environmental degradation. This flipflop initiative is an
example of an environmental clean up which links waste back
to the consumer world which generated it in the first place
whilst providing opportunities to the communities living in
the remote and impacted areas of the world.
The
flipflop is the most basic footwear for so many in the world, yet
every day hundreds of these brightly coloured, non-degradable pieces
of rubber wash up on beaches around the globe, blighting the coastlines
and the lives of local coastal people and the marine and coastal ecology.
Yet
on the coast of Eastern Africa the flipflop initiative is
a remarkable solution to this man-made problem. The local
women and children have been encouraged to collect the washed
up rubbish that arrives from as far a field as Japan, Indonesia,
Malaysia and China. The villagers turn this waste into saleable
products such as key rings, belts, earrings and bags. It is
hard to believe that a simple flipflop can be transformed
from environmentally damaging waste into eye-catching glamour
using only human creativity.
