Cambodian designers turning trash and recyclables into high fashion want to make people rethink their wasteful ways
Members of the recycling collective La Chhouk started with a dress made from brown rice sacks decorated with beer bottle tops and broken CDs which was later worn by a Miss Cambodia runner-up at an international beauty pageant
Most visitors to Cambodia are eager to see the ancient temple complex of Angkor or the beaches of Sihanoukville, but there is one sight they may want to shield their eyes from: mountains of plastic bags, bottles and styrofoam boxes.
Despite remaining on the World Bank’s list of “least developed countries”, Cambodia has enjoyed solid economic growth in recent decades. The Southeast Asian nation has sustained an average GDP growth rate of 7.6 per cent over the last 20 years, the sixth highest in the world. Plastic consumption, however, has also increased at an alarming rate.
According to the charity Fondazione ACRA, the capital Phnom Penh has an annual per capita consumption of 2,000 plastic bags. The average corresponding figure for the European Union stands at about 200.
In terms of pollution the country ranked 145th out of 178 countries in the Environmental Performance Index.
“Plastic waste is everywhere,” says Seng Super, a 22-year-old Cambodian designer. “It’s in the streets, rivers, lakes. It’s very upsetting.”
Seng Super studied at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. He was born in the 1990s, a time when millions of Cambodians were beginning to lift themselves out of extreme poverty, bringing environmental degradation in its wake.