A fantastic school or travel bag for younger kids. Extremely practical, it has adjustable shoulder straps, secure zip closure, lining with inside pocket and a roomy outside zip compartment.
Choose your Kids' Back Pack (approx. 26cm wide, 28cm high, 15cm deep) from either Milk-O (image 1) and Jungle Juice (image 2).
Doy Bags are a range of bags, purses and accessories made from recycled juice packs - non-biodegradable foil and plastic packaging that would otherwise go into landfill sites and incinerators. Doy Bags are produced and traded according to Fair Trade principles.
Who Makes Doy Bags?
Doy Bags are made in the Philippines by a women's cooperative, the Women's Multi-Purpose Cooperative based near Manila. The cooperative produces approximately 500,000 bags and household items per year, thus preventing many millions of juice packs from being burnt, buried or simply littering the streets and waterways.
The Women's Multi-Purpose Cooperative has won a number of awards in the Philippines for its concern for the environment and its outstanding contribution to waste recycling and employment generation.
Who Works for the Cooperative?
The cooperative is proud to provide employment to over 200 women. Almost all the women are their family's main breadwinners, most of their husbands being unable to find work due to the poor economy of the area. The women have an average of 4-6 children, thus working for the cooperative makes a real difference, elevating families from extreme poverty to a decent life. Functioning as a sort of extended family enterprise, the cooperative also employs 11 young men (adult sons of some of the women) as drivers, packers and warehousemen.
What are the Cooperative's Aims?
The Women's Multi-Purpose Cooperative began in 1997 as an environmental project with the aim of 'cleaning and greening' the local neighbourhood. The project was very successful and the cooperative's mission expanded into developing 'livelihood opportunities from garbage' - finding ways of creatively reusing materials that would otherwise go into landfill sites and incinerators.
In 1999 the cooperative was formally registered with a workforce of 100 local women, most of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and the main or only breadwinner for their families. Working together with the local council, the cooperative set up a Recycling Centre and started to educate local households to sort their recyclable waste and sell it to the cooperative. Juice packs - colourful, tough and non-biodegradable - were particularly well suited to 'creative recycling' and Doy Bags, now the cooperative's iconic and most successful product, quickly became very popular.
By proving that there can be a livelihood in garbage, the cooperative has succeeded where the juice manufactures have failed to even try to make a difference (despite several recent acts of parliament to regulate 'ecological solid wastes' in the Philippines).
The cooperative's mission is now both environmental and social as it works to improve the lives of local women by creating long-term sustainable employment - providing not only fair and regular wages, but also the skills and dignity that a proper job brings.
Where do the 'Raw' Juice Packs Come From? Juice drinks in these foil pouches are hugely popular in the Philippines, sold everywhere and drunk by almost everyone. Unfortunately a large number of the discarded juice packs - which are non-biodegradable - end up not only in landfill sites and incinerators, but also litter streets and clog drainage systems, lakes and rivers. To prevent this happening the cooperative organizes regular collections from private homes and also from schools, dormitories and hospitals, offices, community and convention centres, and even from festivals, parties and events of all kinds. The local people are enthusiastic about the project and help as much as they can - even going as far as drinking their juice upside-down!
How are Doy Bags Made?
The cooperative has three main teams: buyers, washers and seamstresses.
The buyers travel around the area buying (by weight) used juice packs from households and institutions (see above).
The washers sort the juice packs, thoroughly sanitize them in a three-stage process, and then dry them.
The seamstresses, the most skilled members of the cooperative, use industrial high speed sewing machines to transform the juice packs into Doy Bags.
The remaining members of the cooperative are involved in quality control, packing and shipping, book keeping and marketing.
Doy Bags are 'Fairly Traded' - What Does This Mean?
Fair Trade is an approach to trade that ensures that workers receive a fair price for what they produce. It also involves a concern for workers' rights and the conditions in which they are employed.
Doy Bags are made by a cooperative which means that every single person involved in the production of the bags has a say in how things are run. In addition to receiving a fair and living wage, the cooperative provides safe and hygienic working conditions, reasonable working hours (with no forced overtime) and a weekly ration of five kilos of rice per worker. All workers are encouraged to attend free skills training and personal development seminars. In addition, the cooperative promotes the importance of education for members' children and provides a scholarship fund (10% of profits) to make this possible. No children or minors are permitted to work for the cooperative under any circumstances.
You may never visit the Philippines yourself, but by buying a fairly traded Doy Bag you can be sure that you are helping to improve the lives of these disadvantaged women and their families.
How Strong/Tough are Doy Bags?
Doy Bags are strong and durable. The larger bags, for example, can easily be used to carry a load of shopping home from the supermarket. The zips are high quality and the seams are double stitched.