Saharan Refugees Recycle Plastic Bottles

One of my favorite blogs to follow is Beading Gem. Pearl always has something interesting to post.

Recently, she posted about Sararan Refugees who are making jewelry from recycled plastic bottles.
"What?" I said when I looked at the pictures. Impossible. Pearl commented as if to answer my question:
"How good they are as design pieces depends on the artistic creativity of the artisans who use them"

One of those artisans is Florie Salnot. She is a  former student and current design research associate of the Royal College of Art and is working with a non-profit organization called Sandblast.

The charity helps displaced Saharawis or Sahrawis living in refugee camps in Algeria to "tell their own story, promote their own culture and earn a living through the arts. "   

This was the part of Pearl's post that really interested me and prompted me to do a post here on my Ring by Ring Designs' blog. It is much like the story "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This is helping people to help themselves.

She developed a unique technique to convert recycled plastic bottles into astonishingly good faux gold jewelry.  The method has to be simple because there aren't a whole lot of resources available to make jewelry at the camps. The plastic bottles are easily collected from the litter around the camps.  The jewelry makers need only hot sand, pigment, nails and wooden boards.She developed a unique technique to convert recycled plastic bottles into astonishingly good faux gold jewelry.  The method has to be simple because there aren't a whole lot of resources available to make jewelry at the camps. The plastic bottles are easily collected from the litter around the camps.  The jewelry makers need only hot sand, pigment, nails and wooden boards..

Please be sure to follow the above links to learn more about this subject. Both the Saharan Refugees and Florie Salnot. Also, check out The Beading Gem's blog for very interesting reading. Many thanks to Pearl for allowing me to share this information from her blog.

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