Hyderabad: A city-based waste recycling group has collected empty chips packets from garbage and turned them into a plastic rope and draped it around metal sticks to form a dining table and four chairs.
This has been put on display at their warehouse in Uppal. The dining table weighs 3kgs and has a glass cover. Aruna Lingam of Bamboo House India explained, “Collecting the chip packets was a task. We had tied up with a few scrap dealers who were paid Rs 200-300 per day to search for disposed chip packets. In the city, there is no organised system where plastic packets are segregated from the waste. For this reason, we had to pay a scarp dealer to scout around for packets, while the cost of each packet was Rs 1.
It took the dealers weeks to gather 500-600 packets. The work on the dining table started over seven to eight months back.
The master artisan, Bhoomaiya, cut open and flattened the chip packets and made it into a strong rope; that’s how the base was made. Special artisans from the Bamboo community were roped in to make the dinning chairs. Tiny packet ropes were used as plaits. It was a complete hand-woven system is similar to that of BD rolling. A large rope of 40-60 feet was made. Then the artisans draped it around the metal rods. The team tested the strength of the rope by tying it to two bikes and then stretching it. The rope stayed intact. Further, it took the team a week to complete the chairs and table.
