Green Recycling Contest: Recycling jeans as a way of life

Ms. Hai Yen is always enthusiastic about her work.

Fall in love with jeans

I happened to see her through a program about green living and environmental protection on TV not long ago. I really admired her and wanted to learn more about the work she was doing. Especially the appeal of recycled jeans items fascinated me.

Not only does it capture emotions about fashion beauty, more importantly, more meaningfully, this activity is a way to contribute to protecting the environment, making life greener and more beautiful.

Yen has been recycling jeans and creating a "capital" of fashion items made from recycled jeans for more than 5 years now.

On a small street in Viet Yen district (Bac Giang) in her shop, Ms. Yen's staff is still diligently cutting and sewing from discarded jeans pants, shirts or school bags and with their creativity, diligence and hard work, they have created fashion products, handicrafts and more importantly, uniquely designed decorative products related to jeans.

She often says: "Joy comes to me every day when many brothers and sisters come to visit the new store. Everyone is excited and loves our recycled jeans products."

Graduated from the University of Labor and Social Affairs, Hai Yen decided to follow her own path with recycled jeans, because since her student years she knew about and was passionate about this.

Having participated in many environmental volunteer activities while still in school, she still cherished a plan for a job that would contribute to reducing waste and making life greener. Thus, the desire to make recycled products was ignited in Hai Yen.

Developing recycled jeans

From the old jeans she collected, Hai Yen tried to create many useful, creative and highly applicable products. Initially, there were only a few pairs of bags and backpacks, but gradually she and her colleagues created many other products.

Thus, old jeans have more opportunities to be recycled. According to her, some indispensable tools in creating recycled jeans are:

- Specialized sewing machines: Industrial and semi-industrial machines.

- Household sewing machine: Can sew, but is suitable for sewing soft bags with few layers of fabric such as tote bags, crossbody bags, hats...

- Sewing needle: Use needle number 16 - 18 (normal sewing needle is 11).

- Sewing thread: If you sew a little, you can buy a roll of denim thread, the kind used to sew jeans. You can also use nylon thread or parachute thread.

- Create bag form: For bag models that need a standing form like backpacks, use specialized cotton padding to sew the bag. Use an iron to firmly adhere the glue to the fabric to create the bag's form.

Those are the basics to start trying to recycle your old jeans. With old jeans, through cleaning, cutting, choosing usable fabric and patterns, we can all be reborn.

With the materials of different jeans, we can recycle them into suitable useful items. For example, with thin jeans, we can create a shape for a cute jeans hair bow. Or we can use small pieces of jeans after cutting to create unique jeans earrings or a unique and convenient phone bag.

Hai Yen's recycled jeans products are extremely diverse.

From the old jeans recycling workshop project sponsored by Live & Learn through the initiative fund "For clean air - Green city", with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ms. Hai Yen has learned a lot of experience and been inspired to create many quality recycled jeans products.

Many recycled products of the girl from Bac Giang have been introduced and displayed at major exhibitions, most recently the Denims and Jeanss Vietnam 2024 Exhibition held in Ho Chi Minh City.

Sharing about the journey of recycling jeans, Ms. Hai Yen said: She and her colleagues have gone quite a long way in "rescuing" old jeans into beautiful and useful items, bringing the use of recycled products closer to the daily lives of more people, reducing fashion waste.

Her group is extremely happy to be able to contribute a small action to the common global ideal of protecting the environment, reducing waste, thereby moving towards a green, clean life.

Spreading value

With that mindset and way of life, Ms. Hai Yen wants the spirit of recycling to spread to the community as much as possible. The proof is that she has organized a series of jeans recycling workshops in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and many other cities so that many people who share the same ideals of recycling, protecting the environment, and living green can attend.

In addition, her group regularly organizes workshops to learn the basics of sewing recycled jeans to earn extra income. From here, many jobs are created, helping many people around her in Bac Giang and neighboring provinces to have stable jobs.

Hai Yen spreads love for recycled items to everyone.

"About a year ago, I was the only one doing this meticulous work, but I'm glad that now there are many more people who love recycling jeans like me, creating quality and aesthetic products. I feel that the inspiration for recycling jeans has been spreading to many people.

Turning discarded items and reducing fashion waste into beautiful products is not easy. Those will be days of hunching over from morning to night, fabric dust all over your body, and at the end of the workday, coming home to take a shower with fabric dust still in your nose, and there will be more calluses on your already rough hands from making handmade products.

But I am still very proud of the products I make, which contain all my heart and passion. Conquering old jeans is a daily joy. And I am so happy that people recognize and love those products," Yen said.

Saying goodbye to Hai Yen at her store in Bac Giang, I still lingered over the images of the bags, school bags, backpacks, and beautifully recycled jeans that she and her team have been making. I was also filled with excitement when I heard about her many promising projects in the near future.

Certainly, many quality and creative recycled jeans products as well as exhibitions and workshops by Hai Yen will continue to be implemented in the future.

Wishing the meaningful environmental work of the girl born in 1995 always be successful, spreading more good values ​​in the community.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/cuoc-thi-tai-tao-xanh-tai-che-do-jeans-nhu-mot-le-song-20240805120102278.htm