Know how this homegrown brand has helped in reducing waste and providing sustainable livelihood
Some 14 years ago, a community in Payatas used to make foot rugs out of retaso (scrap fabric) to earn a living. They spent hours and hours, painstakingly weaving them within their shabby homes. As they did not have direct access to the supply of raw materials and the market, they would call it lucky to even get paid PhP10-16 a day after a hard day’s work. This social injustice was what moved the founders of Rags 2 Riches (R2R) to establish a fashion and design house that aims to resolve such systemic problems with a long-term solution. Today, R2R continues to develop products handcrafted by around 200 artisans from all over the Philippines. In an interview, Reese Fernandez-Ruiz, one of the founders of R2R, shares how their social enterprise has contributed to making the world a better place.
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We started using overstock fabric serendipitously. We realised that instead of incidentally using scrap fabric, we should intentionally use it. There is a misconception that using scrap or unwanted fabric is cheaper than using new fabric. Truth is, upcycled fabric may even be costlier and more time consuming to use because it takes a lot of time and design effort to use textiles that are damaged, off-coloured and in quantities that are not predictable. A huge percentage of textiles are already wasted even before they go through the production process, more is wasted in production, and many more as consumers dispose of them. The fashion industry is a huge contributor to the global environmental crisis. We decided to make it our core value to not just create livelihood opportunities for artisans, but to reduce waste in the process.
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