Our newspaper bag unit is a permanent, exciting work-in-progress. Using upcycled newspapers provides us with an alternative  to plastic bags in our two shops at Cardamom County– the Raxa Collective store and the via kerala shop. It is also a way to work with more people in our community. We have been working at making this unit a sustainable entreprise with many collaborators since the beginnings of Raxa Collective in 2011.

The key components in making the bags are simply newspapers, glue (which can be prepared at home by mixing flour and water over heat) and jute strings.

This year with the advice of long term partners such as Salim E.I. and Diwia Thomas, interns on the social entrepreneurship team set up a workshop to train beginner-bag-makers. 15 trainees, men and women from around Kumily came to the Learning Laboratory at Cardamom County to be trained on how to make solid, trendy newspaper bags.

The new bag-makers’ bags will be supplied to our clients at our shops and also to Papertrail, a non-profit which touches a vast network of newspaper suppliers, bag makers and customers, which is run by Diwia Thomas in Cochin.