Where the Waves are Clean: How Siargao Manages Waste Notice how the sea makes a resounding woosh when it tides. A call of nature perhaps, implying its overflow from mounds of trash beneath it. Factor in a music festival, an international surfing competition, and direct flights to the island, tourists are flocking Siargao like seagulls in migration and waste is a tailing shadow to every traveller. It's a boom for local hostels, resorts, and surf centers, thus they chip in to manage the garbage in their beloved island. The Siargao Tourism Operators Association (STOA), however, has reported that solid waste disposal is the top challenge to the island's conservation. Only 14% of their members say their trash are collected, and...
The Mothers Who Make a Living that Matters While Cebu is always known as the Queen City, it has been kindly to its true royalty — the queens that weave bags for a cause. The city's Rise Above Foundation has come up with their Livelihood Program to unravel purposeful work for the mothers of the children at their Family Care Center. First is bag-weaving. These carry-ons are knitted recycled rice sacks, plastic-laminated, and color-printed which have birthed the good-natured Recybags. It may seem simplistic, but the layers within the bags carry love amid native travails. Because of their individual reminiscenses, they can bind the sacks variously which makes all products never similar from each other. Photo by: Rise Above Foundation To...
Threading Treasures: Scrap-Weaving Katsa into Repurposed Tote Bags Like earth, fabrics cover our land's inner treasures. Thus, any cloth is precious and is of transcendent purpose. Likha Lokal, with Carmela Jiao spearheading the brand, labors to enlarge the art of scrap-weaving. Carmela says she sources the raw materials: flour bags or katsa and fabrics for reuse. These are the fibers that make up every knot inside Likha Lokal's repurposed tote bags which have become a cultural piece. The hands that weave these bags belong to native seamstresses, according to Carmela. One of her earliest weavers is Pacencia Manalo who hails from Padre Garcia, Batangas. Ate Pacencia, as Carmela conviniently calls her seamtresses, has been crafting Likha Lokal products since the...
