Yara Yassin and Rania Refai, both product designers, started Genuine Plastic Bags as an eco-friendly model that makes use of the abundance of plastic bags Egypt does not recycle.

 

Instead of recycling, Refai and Yassin want Egyptians to “upcycle”, or convert waste into functional materials and products.

 

Their idea started as a graduation project, based on a learning experience in Germany, “we learned how to iron plastic and make products out of it and wanted to take this model to Egypt and show people how easy it was for them to do it,” said Yassin.

 

Genuine Plastic Bags says upcycling means they can turn plastic bags into material that is suitable for wet and dry weather, with products ranging from fashion bags and bookmarks to cell phone, laptop and tablet covers.

 

“We try to make products that are useful and not just aesthetically pleasing. For example, we make bags for shoes when people are travelling; people usually use a plastic bag to wrap their shoes in and then discard it, and we want them to have one that they can keep reusing,” said Yassin.

 

Because their designs depend on the graphical elements on the plastic bags used, each design is unique but customers can choose based on the shapes of models they preview.

 

Helping the environment and the country solve its problem of plastic bags is about the bigger issue of developing in a sustainable manner for Yassin and Refai: “Egypt is a developing country, and like all developing countries, it looks at developing as quickly as possible without much attention to its resources. We cannot afford this and we want to see it change.”