TRAHSE Bags are Products with a Story
A story of employing people throughout the USA.
A hiStory of the discards we reuse to make each product.
The many and colorful stories of women who’s hands craft our products made from trash.
The story of upcycling. What does Upcycle mean?
The story of Liberia where the TRASHE Bags vision began - where 85% unemployment and no public rubbish removal gets you thinking…
We want to
OUR FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES
PHASE 1 – Establish eCommerce Site and Home-Based Manufacturing of Upcycled, Usable Items.
Make 3-5 prototype items that fit our objectives of being usable, durable, fashionable and constructed from 90% upcycled materials; that is waste that is reused without the resource consumption required for recycling.
Products are manufactured in the homes of rural Colorado women, but men are welcome too. Our model of home-based manufacturing fulfills a number of objectives: it raises household awareness of the inherent usability of many discarded items, it reduces the amount of energy consumed by a central manufacturing facility and the environmental impact of traveling to a manufacturing center. Also, when your home becomes a manufacturing center you begin to think of the potential in each discard as raw materials in the creation of new products made from trash – it makes us think before we discard. This is called waste source reduction and is a great favor we do for our planet in decreasing landfill pileup. We have completed this phase as of Dec, 2009.
PHASE II – Access Broader Markets through Marketing Research and Search Engine Optimization.
This is our current phase of organizational development. During this phase we seek to identify ideal e-commerce and traditional markets for our products. Before aggressively pursuing those markets we seek to build up our inventory of products made from discards and ensure the stability and ongoing success of our artists and distribution model. During this phase we develop a model to collect durable, discarded packaging at public locations. We also seek to expand the number of artists manufacturing products through TRASHE Bags. You can help this process by contacting us if you have bright ideas for new products to bring to market that promote upcyling or if you are looking for a way to make some extra revenue from your home while helping the environment. We may find that we will distribute out products only through the Web and non-profits as fundraisers. There is so much passion in our product that we struggle with going the traditional retail route. We want to find folks that will buy but also LOVE our products. We want TRASHE Bags to be associated with the word Upcycle. Many people ask us, “What does upcycle mean?” Our definition is that you leave a manufactured material it its current chemical state and reuse it as raw material in a new product.
PHASE III – Broaden our Reach to Other Communities.
We are proving our business model in rural Colorado but we intend at this phase to replicate the Colorado model in communities throughout the USA. We hope to prepare a business model that allows anyone with about $100, a bit of passion, drive and good business sense to build a TRASHE Bags store anywhere in the USA and possibly, the world. The store will engage that community in collection and repurposing efforts that result in very cool products that tell the unique story of that community and its upcycle opportunities.
