From Trash To Treasure

By S. INDRAMALAR

With some thought and creativity, trash can be turned into ‘trashion’.

MAY Oh has a huge appetite for rubbish, particularly pull tabs from discarded soda cans. She collects them in the thousands and spends hours every day driving to coffee shops around her neighbourhood (and sometimes quite a distance away) to buy the pull tabs – by the kilogrammes.

Make no mistake. Oh is not a pack rat or a magpie. Nor is she a scavenging hobo. She’s a 49-year-old mother of two with a penchant for craft and a talent for transforming “rubbish” into handbags.

The idea of making bags using pull tabs was purely accidental, she recounts.

“I was at my aunt’s house when I saw this container filled with pull tabs. It struck me that I could use them to make bags. So I experimented. The first few bags I made weren’t very good but through trial and error, the bags became better.

Unique bags: Though the demand for her pull-tab bags are substantial, May Oh has no intention of starting a business. Craft is her passion and she wants to keep it as her hobby, not her job

“My daughter carried one of the bags to college and many of her friends and even her lecturers were fascinated by it.

“I’ve been interested in craft since I was in Year Five or Six. At the time, I’d make bags and baskets out of raffia, which were popular at the time. Also, in those days, we could not ask our parents to buy any bag we liked. So, I made my own,” explains Oh who is from Seberang Prai, Penang.

Making the bags – coming up with new designs and improving on her technique – was all for fun. Oh never intended to sell her bags or start a business.

She made them simply because she enjoyed it and the bags were for herself, her daughter and close friends.

However, their uniqueness drew a lot of attention and she was invited to showcase her bags and conduct a workshop on making them at a recycling event in Petaling Jaya two years ago.

The process of making the pull-tab bags can be painstaking as there are many steps involved, says Oh who has been making them for close to three years.

Trendy: Oh uses pull tabs that are crocheted together with double-stranded wool to create sturdy bags.

First, she has to buy the pull tabs. She uses about 250 pieces for a handphone pouch and 2,000 pieces for a medium- to large-sized tote. Next comes the sorting (there are various kinds of tabs – square and round – and also, not every tab can be used), cleaning and drying.

“Sometimes from a 10kg bag, I can only use about 200 tabs. They have to be flattened piece by piece with a hammer and then washed with a light detergent. I have to make sure there is no trace of sugar on them before I dry them under the hot sun. Only then can I start crocheting them into a bag,” says Oh.

She uses double-stranded wool – a must if the bag is to last at least a couple of years. Next, she sews on the bag lining, handles and clasps.

It takes, on average, a week to complete one bag. If she has a deadline, Oh can make 10 bags in a week – working at breakneck pace, that is.

Because of the work and materials involved, the bags can cost quite a bit: RM70 for a pouch and RM130 to RM380 for the purses and totes.

“People assume that the bags will be cheap because they’re made from pull tabs. They ask why the bags cost so much when they’re not branded. They don’t realise that I have to buy all the materials which can come up to RM100 or more for one bag.”

Although the bags aren’t cheap and she only sells them at environmental events she partcipates in from time to time, Oh is not short on customers – one is Tunku Datin Paduka Khadijah (daughter of the late Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj).

Oh has no intention of taking this pursuit further although she is contemplating writing a book about making bags from recyclable material.

“I don’t want to open a shop or start a business. It’s just my passion, my hobby. I do give lessons. I am not afraid of competition because with handicraft, everyone has their own style. Sometimes, my students have better ideas than me and I learn too,” she says.

Apart from pull tabs, Oh has also made bags from pre-paid phone cards, and has her eye on other recyclable material which she can re-use, such as CDs.

“I’m also thinking about recycling the pull-tab bags. For example, if a customer wants to turn a bag she bought from me a couple of years ago into something new, she can,” says Oh.

She has also picked up environment-friendly habits after embarking on her craft project.

“It has definitely enriched my life. Not only am I able to work at home, doing what I really enjoy, I have learnt that rubbish – or what people regard as rubbish – can be used as a resource. And I get to teach my children about it, too,” says Oh, who has adopted other eco-friendly practices at home, such as using garbage enzymes to clean.