Born from the desire to reduce India's mountain of waste, improve energy efficiency, and help some of Delhi's poorest climb out of the city's slums, Conserve India turns plastic bags into stylish purses and wallets.

Conserve India started as a fledgling recycling project but quickly adapted to confront the biggest challenge it was facing – what to do with the thousands of plastic bags that could not be composted or recycled locally.

After much thought and experimentation, the Conserve India team came up with a method of UPCYCLING rather than recycling. By washing, drying, and pressing plastic bags into sheets, Handmade Recycled Plastic (HRP) was born and designs for handbags, wallets, shoes and belts quickly came flooding in.

Today, Conserve India employs and trains hundreds of people from Delhi's most disadvantaged communities to clear its streets of the plague of plastic bag waste. Once the waste bags are turned into HRP products they are sold for profits which can be spent in those same communities on education and welfare programs.

As Conserve India grows, so does its desire to reduce waste even further using upcycled denim blue jeans and tire inner tubes to create fashion forward handbags, shoulder bags and other accessories!

FASHION AGAINST POVERTY