WrapUp : Using Eco High-Fashion to Clean Neighbourhoods

Currently the coastal city of Karachi, Pakistan is home to over 20 million people, making it roughly the world’s 12th largest city. Yet, it lacks effective waste management systems hence 40% of its over 12,000 tonnes of daily waste generated is not picked up. This results in waste being piled up on streets and clogging waterways. As if these environmental hazards were not bad enough often the only viable solution some communities have is to burn the trash out in the open thereby adding to the city’s air pollution, (as it is Karachi’s air quality ranked the worst in September 2023). All of these make Karachi the 5th least livable city in the world as per the Economist.

The state of affairs and poor government support has resulted in many citizens having defeatist attitudes towards the possibility of having cleaner neighbourhoods. A significant percentage of the waste (nearly 15 % of low-income households in Karachi as per a survey conducted by Tearfund) is post-consumer wrapper waste notably from food packaging. This is low value, single-use plastic, which is not recycled due to lack of a technical feasibility. It is a major pollutant of both neighbourhood streets and waterways. It breakdown into microplastics and metal ion leachate of multilayer plastic bearing aluminum is a contaminant of water systems and adversely effects human health.

The waste accumulation problem, especially plastic waste accumulation is pervasive, and not just plaguing Karachi, but the world. Aside from neighbourhood waste dumps, landfills all across the world are filling up fast and efforts are being made to reduce it. A significant contributor to landfill waste is the fashion industry, currently responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions and the 5th most plastic waste polluter.

We wished to create a comprehensive and viable solution for Karachi’s poor waste management systems, especially targeting the most vulnerable communities that are informal settlements, often referred to as ‘slums’ which often do not have any formal waste management system. And we wished to do it in a manner that enables community action, by targeting defeatist mindsets and showing new possibilities.

Karachi’s trash problem owning to its size, complexity and lack of government support and infrastructure is a complex problem. Hence it requires a comprehensive approach.

That is why we at Wrapup developed an integrated, multi-disciplinary and most importantly human-centered approach that takes the most vulnerable citizens, (those residing in neighbourhoods considered ‘slums’) into account as well the issue of the prevalent, low-value, non-recyclable wrapper waste.   

For this reason our solution has multiple fronts. The can be divided into four arms. (Please note our organization registration is underway)

• The first is WrapUp Business which specializes in upcycling the lowest-value, non-recyclable post-consumer wrapper waste (food packaging mostly from chips and biscuit wrappers) to create premium, luxury, high-fashion products. This also shows the fashion industry that high-end products can be made with circular models. Our revenue from these products is intended to make us not only be a profitable thriving business that creates employment, especially for artisans, particularly female artisans in low-income communities who are now leaving handicraft making owing to it not being a financially sustainable venture for them but also to fund our other activities that educate and inspire a local movement for environmental change.

  
  

  

  

• WrapUp Education is where we challenge defeatist mindsets offering hope and tangible means to make a change through workshops and educational programs on waste management, low waste lifestyle and eco-activism. We have a range of programs and workshops that we have developed based on the needs of the particular community that we work with. Our particular focus is on school children, as they are growing minds filled with possibility, and vulnerable communities and neighbourhods that lack waste management facilities. These programs enable communal climate action and impact, leading to cleaner neighbourhoods. It also serves another important function by creating a supply chain for WrapUp Business.
• WrapUp Studio. It serves as the R&D and design center for WrapUp Business. It is essentially a multi-disciplinary makers space of artists, designers and innovators which focuses on pushing the boundary of what is possible to create with wrapper waste. Through innovation and research we wish for new ideas to emerge and by creating art pieces and art exhibits we hope to further inspire people with new ideas and ways of thinking about waste, design and processes.
  
• We further our communal impact with our fourth arm: WrapUp D-I-Y. Through this arm we teach communities to independently create crafts from wrapper waste. Our particular focus is on women and children from (financially) disadvantaged backgrounds so they can develop potentially income-generating skills as well as be inspired to create something whilst diverting waste from their neighbourhood waste dumps and landfills.      

At WrapUp we are not just upcycling. We have an integrative approach, with each of our arms focused on inspiring change, be it through awareness workshops/programs that involve existing communities, our artisanal products, design process, or our outreach work. And it extends across social classes. We address all possible avenues that we can possibly address as a small company.

Our integrative approach ensures that we are in some way affecting every level of society across social class.  

WrapUp Business: Inspires everyone, however users will be affluent people who purchase branded luxury goods (owing to our product’s immense aesthetic appeal) and those who value sustainability (owing to the fact that they are made from upcycled otherwise polluting, non-recyclable materials). This allows us to generate revenue to continue our work in our other domains Currently, luxury fashion whilst having the margins to be able to absorb added costs of using sustainable materials is not employing circular models in their supply chain as they can. However there is a growing demand for sustainable fashion. Our products can meet that demand.

WrapUp Education:

• Communities lacking proper waste management systems. By educating them about waste management and low waste lifestyle, we can (and already have) allow them to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place, thereby reducing the size of the neighbourhood waste dump.
• School children. By working with school children we give hope to them that a better future is possible. We have currently developed an educational program for children that through teaching them about waste management and sustainability also instills leadership skills in them that can give them the confidence to champion any cause that they feel deeply about in the future. 
• Eco-conscious citizens. We have realized that there is growing demographic of eco-conscious consumers, they are already trying their best to lead low waste lifestyles, our programs help mobilise action in their communities and provide for them avenues to submit their unavoidable wrapper waste, and help get their friends families and neighbourhoods on board with sustainable living. 

WrapUp Studio: We believe art and design is inspiring. Art pieces tend to provoke and inspire action, hence they affect everyone. Between WrapUp Busniness and Studio we also create employment opportunities for artists and artisans who have otherwise given up on their craft owing to it not being financially viable.  

WrapUp D-I-Y: By teaching people, especially women and children from financially disadvantaged communities, we are not only giving them hope and inspiration but a skill with which they can potentially supplement their income with.  

At the end of the day WrapUp is solving the problem of Waste Management and the problem of hopelessness by shifting the focus on what can WE do and what we do as the collective rather than being upset about lack of government initiative and corportations.

WrapUp was started by myself (Aimah Moiz, team lead) and my mother, Uzma Moiz. While based in Pakistan, I am an industrial physicist with a Physics degree from a Liberal Arts and Science college in the Netherland. Owing the nature of my degree I was able to take art and design courses during college and the Liberal Arts background that most effective solutions are multi-disciplinary in nature.  

After moving back to Pakistan I worked as an R&D manager at my father’s manufacturing firm and developed technology to combat climate challenges. The most notable being the development of an indigenous solution, with a lower environmental footprint for the 2020-2021 national desert locust emergency. Having worked on one environmental crisis gave me the confidence to tackle another pressing one.  

One the side I began volunteering as a science communicator working with school children in communities with limited access to resources, instilling in them a love of learning and science through play. During this time I also connected with other environmental activists and became a radio presenter on a local educational programme.  

Perturbed by the plastic problem, my mother and I adopted a low-waste lifestyle five years ago. After noticing how much it reduced our household waste, we realized what it could do for the communities we volunteered at. My mother was already a volunteer with Al-Furqan Welfare Organisation, an organization operating 14 schools and 2 orphanages across Karachi in low-income neighbourhoods, providing free-of-cost education, and we ran a waste management program there with one of the schools’ primary school children in March 2023. The program proved to be incredibly successful with all 200 children committing to reducing single-use plastic in the capacities possible and the organization administration asked us to scale the program to all of their remaining schools by training their teachers which have been doing since August 2023.

We will still perturbed by single-use food packaging, and we realized if we cannot recycle it, perhaps we can upcycle it. My mother who is a skilled crafter herself, began experimenting with different designs and we tested out a variety of different potential, functional products. We then began teaching some of the simpler designs to the school children during their art classes and they started making them on their own to raise funds for their school. Some students have already started making and selling them in their own communities. Our association with welfare organisations also introduced us to female artisans who had given up their cultural crafts for other employment as it was no longer financially viable for them.

My own work in the tech space, working closely with government bodies combating national emergencies, and a study of indigenous systems made me realize that we did not necessarily need more hi-tech solutions, for many climate challenges. We often already have the tech, it may not be hi-tech, it may look very simple as most ancestral technology often is to us. The real innovation lies in systems and implementation of it.

• Even though we have a successful education program running with the school network where we have impacted 3000 childen, we are at the Prototype stage. We have multiple working products for WrapUp Business and seek to raise investment to set up a production unit.
• Aside from our product prototypes, in five months we collected 10 kg of post-consumer wrapper waste (most still in storage waiting for us to enter production) and so far our limited products were made with a total of 1.9 kg of upcycled wrapper waste (these are only statistics for the prototypes we made, it does not take into account the products the school children have been making). We are extremely proud to share that even though collecting our raw material is not easy (wrappers must be opened properly at the top, crumbs emptied out, and they must not be segregated, not mixed with any wet waste), we have been able to create a supply chain for the business comprising of wrapper collection from the various communities of eco-conscious citizens we work with.  
  
  
• Currently we are working on developing simple, mechanical tooling (non-reliant on electricity) that make our cutting and other processing operations for the handmade products even easier. Our focus at the moment is to raise funds to complete our tooling and set up a production unit begin product production at scale. We designed our products such to utilize even smaller size wrappers such as from small biscuit packaging, allowing us to use anywhere between 150-250 wrappers (depending on the size of the original wrapper and how it was opened) to make one clutch bag.

• We also have an ongoing activity where we are using ancestral technology to make thread and fabric from wrapper waste that has been slow due to lack of funds.

As mentioned above our main barrier at the moment is financial. However aside from funds we are looking to develop our skills to learn how to pitch to investors.

We also seek access to markets, especially those outside of Pakistan. Our products are not only made with upcycled materials and prevent neighbourhood and landfill waste, but they are also handmade, luxury products, hence our target market are in the Global North.

However, owing to our backgrounds, the team currently lacks knowledge of effective marketing, sales and business strategies.

We would also like to have access to mentors who can further refine our technology and offer us technical support us in our ongoing R&D work on creating more innovative products with wrapper waste.

Leadership coaching is another avenue we would require support in.

Wrapup developed offers a comprehensive, integrated, multi-disciplinary and most importantly human-centered approach that takes the most vulnerable citizens, (those residing in neighbourhoods considered ‘slums’) into account.  

Our solution not only enables cleaner neighbourhoods but inspires citizens, to take communal action to clean their neighbourhoods. At the same time it also tackles the problem of the wasteful fashion industry by creating and handmade products with the most low-value non-recyclable wrapper waste.

Other upcycling solutions employ either recyclable waste such as PET (which is high value and is widely recycled, such that it can no longer be found in Karachi waste dumps are scavengers salvage it for sale) or work with industrial wrapper waste. Industrial wrapper waste is easier to procure and process due to its large standardized size and the fact that it does not require cleaning operations. While working with industrial wrapper waste does divert waste from landfills, our goal is to clean neighbourhoods hence we employ multi-pronged approaches, integrating community-centered educational programs and D-I-Y workshops to engage people across social classes.  

We also feel that our products can also challenge high-fashion brands to employ circular models in their supply-chain and work towards reducing their carbon footprint.

We believe art and design is inspiring. Just seeing a fancy clutch bag with a soft, napa leather-like feel, made with 200 biscuit wrappers, is mind boggling. It can and already has, inspires change, change at an individual level and change at a communal level.

We hope that seeing our products made with upcycled materials makes consumers not only favour our brand but demand better practices from other brands to shun the use of non-sustainable materials in the high-fashion space.

Educating children not only affects the now, as we can see how these children in the communities we worked in not only committed to leading low-waste lifestyles but how it shapes their minds and hones them into more responsible conscious citizens. Given that we chiefly work with children with limited resources and opportunities, it is incredibly inspiring for us to see the change in them. Some of these children have already taken the baton of cleaning their school’s street after school, even when they are made fun of.

By focusing mindsets on what WE can change it is inspiring people and seeing possibility is encouraging more people to work with us. We hope that soon we can be getting interest at the municipal level to be more involved as well. At one of our exhibitions a 10 year old boy asked my mother why we were making bags from wrapper waste. My mother told him we are doing this for him, so that he has a better future, a cleaner Earth to live in. A few days later we ran into his mother, who said that he started collecting all his cookie wrappers. When she scolded him for not throwing them in the bin he informed her he was collecting them to send them to aunty ‘who is making these bags for us, so we have a better future.’ He then proceeded to get a pair of safety scissors to teach his little sister (who was not permitted to use the sharper kitchen scissors) to teach her how to properly cut cookie wrappers ‘so that they would be useable for aunty’.

Currently we are working with 3000 children. We wish to scale this to 300,000 in two years with our educational programs and partnerships.

As our production unit and our team expands, we wish to develop more accurate systems to measure the weight of wrappers we collected, and the weight of the material used.

We work with technology on two fronts. One is the development of tooling to process our raw material to save time in our production process. As we think about sustainability at every step of the way, our focus is on developing simple mechanically-driven tooling and machines that are not reliant on electricity (to be mindful of our carbon footprint and so we can operate in areas with limited electricity) and can be operated by low-strength individuals such as women or people with disadvantage.  

The second is the technology that we use to create our products in the new product innovation space. As we are really interested in indigenous and ancestral technologies, we are working with indigenous tools as well and refining the tools and the processes to be used with post-consumer wrapper waste.

One of our ongoing exercises is incorporating the traditional handspun spinning wheel and loom to create thread and subsequently cloth. We are constantly studying more traditional indigenous processes, and refining and modifying it whilst using simple to tooling and good design to bring products made with them (and that too with wrapper waste!) to a modern audience.

Co-founders 2
Interns 2
Occasional volunteers in product development 2

We currently have a social media intern and a design intern We have had two female artisans volunteer with us briefly. We are hoping to raise funds so we can engage them formally.

Our first educational program piloted in March 2023 with 200 children at a branch of Al-Furqan school.

In August 2023 at the start of the new school term we expanded it by training the school teachers of the other 13 branches and working with them. We also began product prototyping in August 2023.   

Hence we have only been working on this for about a year.

We have a women-focused approach. Even though we are currently an all women team, by women-focused we do not mean we will only be hiring women. We mean that we are committed to creating a work environment that is inclusive for women. For our production unit, we would like to create opportunities for women who have limited education, come from lower income background, who are young mothers and struggle to find work close to their communities (which is necessary even if they can take their children to work). 

At present one of our interns is based in Ethiopia. Even though our work of cleaning neighborhoods is local, our message is global, so we are very excited to have people from other cultures be part of our message. 

As for the communities we work with, most of them are extremely vulnerable. A key community that we are targeting is Macchar Colony, an informal settlement of roughly 700,000 people which does not have formal waste management infrastructure and limited resources. The colony mostly comprises of Bengali ethnicity, who have had a history of discrimination due to their ethnicity (these were inhabitants of the former East Pakistan who settled in Karachi before the independence of the state of Bangladesh), so much so that they are often denied Identity Cards and thereby passports, barring them from institutional services like healthcare and education. Our team has been working there for another project and we are keen to partner with an existing non-governmental organization and community to conduct WrapUp D-I-Y workshops that possibly also incorporates something from Bengali handiwork so they can feel more connected to their culture. It is also on our radar to begin a WrapUp education program and organize a subsequent neighbourhood cleanup.

We have divided our model into four arms:

WrapUp Business: makes a bold statement in the fashion world that eco can be top of the bill, generates revenue for other pillars through sale of luxury high-fashion products made with wrapper waste.

WrapUp Education: targets defeatist mindsets around sustainability, offers hope and tangible means to make a change for both school children and communities through workshops and educational programs. Creates supply chain for WrapUp Business.

WrapUp Studio: pushes the boundaries of what is possible to create with wrapper waste, inspires to think creatively. R&D and innovation center for WrapUp Business

WrapUp D-I-Y: teaches communities to craft wrapper waste products independently, focusing on (financially) disadvantaged women and children, fostering skill-development
 

WrapUp Business is our main revenue generating arm that funds all other arms. We do seek to have some paid workshops for the middle and high income demographics for WrapUp D-I-Y and Education, however as our focus is vulnerable communities and generating maximum impact, paid workshops will be few and subsidized. Until WrapUp business is profitable, we will be seeking also be seeking grants for these divisions.  

For WrapUp Business we intend to primarily target markets in North America, and Europe, selling these at premium costs to enable fair wages for our artisans and enable our other activities for the other three arms.  

We are currently in the process of raising funds to raise capital to start our production unit for WrapUp Business.

Then we plan on beginning product sales.