Gowns made from plastic waste, newspapers and rice sacks - Philippine dress maker is in demand for birthdays, weddings and beauty pageants

A dress maker in the Philippines turns waste materials into birthday, wedding and pageant gowns, using everything from newspapers to plastic wrap to rice sacks

‘It’s important to recycle or utilise used materials so we can help our Earth,’ says one client of Nora Buenviaje, who’s been reusing waste for seven years

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Nora Buenviaje, a dress maker, shows an outfit made of recycled rice sacks, plastic bags and straws at her shop in the Philippines. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:15pm, 19 Mar 2022

Nora Buenviaje has been making dresses out of waste materials for the past seven years. She says wearing clothes made from such items as recycled newspapers, plastic wrapping and rice sacks can be both economical and fashionable.

Using a foot-operated sewing machine, the 51-year-old Philippine seamstress stitches and weaves plastics and other materials into inventive and fashionable frocks and gowns, sometimes completed by headdresses.

“The bubble wraps from delivery packages are nice looking and make for a good design, especially the black and white wraps,” she says. White wraps were good for making fairy or wedding gowns, she said.

The dresses sell for between US$30 to US$50 and are used for everything from debuts – a coming-of-age party for a woman’s 18th birthday – to weddings.

Buenviaje sews a dress out of used sacks of rice. Photo: Reuters

In Asia, there is plenty of waste material for Buenviaje to work with.

About 80 per cent of global ocean plastic is estimated to come from Asian rivers, and the Philippines alone contributes a third of that, according to a 2021 report by Oxford University’s online publication, Our World in Data.

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