Yeskah’s Eco-friendly Shop makes money from paper

YESKAH’S Eco-friendly Shop, a Quezon City-based business, is promoting the country’s circular economy by upcycling discarded paper into profitable products.

The business started by selling paper bags in 2020 and has since expanded to various upcycled products.

The paper scraps left from making paper bags are transformed into various products including woven boxes, fans, paper seed bombs — recycled paper pulp mixed with seeds — and more.

“A lot of scraps came to me, so what we did was innovate — we transformed them into new products,” owner Jessa R. Velo Atnero-Sabaldan told BusinessWorld in Filipino during an ecofriendly bazaar at Farmers Plaza, Quezon City last month.

They have also expanded into bags and purses made from discarded jeans and clothing, which were a crowd favorite at the bazaar.

Ms. Sabaldan said she did not originally mean to promote sustainability, but she eventually realized that she was doing so by finding ways to make money from waste.

The Department of Trade and Industry in a 2022 report said the local paper industry has boosted recycling efforts in the past 10 years, with 85% to 90% of its fiber now obtained from locally recovered paper.

The initiative diverts 1.4 million tons of waste yearly and contributes more than P7 billion to the informal economy, it said.

Ms. Sabaldan said apart from the business’s sustainability efforts, the heart of her business also lies in the craftsmanship of at least 10 single mothers and senior citizens in their neighborhood.

She plans to hire more local women as her business grows. She also dreams of having her own space once she has saved enough. — Edg Adrian A. Eva