TORONTO, Ontario–Bazura Bags are helping a group of women in the Philippines after a devastating typhoon. The Women's Cooperative takes used, colorful and non biodegradable juice containers that would otherwise clutter landfills, fields and streets of their community, and creates Bazura Bags.
With only the help of the local village council, six Filipino women set up the Cooperative which has grown to include more than500 members today. Twenty percent of the members work full time at the Cooperative which organizes schools and groups of adult collectors to gather more than 50,000 used juice containers per day. They are washed, sanitized and recycled into a wide variety of durable bags, accessories, home furnishings and even footwear that are exported and sold in more than 15 countries around the world.
Bazura Bags is one of the first and oldest of the Cooperative’s distributors and marketers of their handmade bags and accessories. The North American company carries the largest selection of bags and accessories from the Cooperative and sells only Eco bags made by the Cooperative.
In September of 2009, the powerful Typhoon Ondoy struck the suburb near Manila where the Women's Cooperative is located. The typhoon severely damaged their production facility and equipment, and took the lives of two women of the cooperative. Many more of the women’s homes were flooded
“Although we provide relief support, particularly in the form of 5% of our sales going to their relief and scholarship funds, what victims of a natural disaster really want is a sense of normalcy and to get back to work,” said Larry Duprey, the founder of Bazura Bags. “The women at the Cooperative are not relying on just charity to keep their business going, they are proud of the products they make and want meaningful work and support in the form of well-earned business.”