OLD BAGS, NEW FURNITURE

After more than two months of sheltering behind walls of sandbags and hoping against hope that the floodwaters wouldn’t seep through, residents of many parts of Thailand are now at a loss as to how to dispose of unwanted sandbags.

Just as the material is turning into valueless waste, unwelcome to even garbage collectors, a team of designers is coming up with a programme to recycle the sandbags. And with hundreds of thousand of houses and their contents badly damaged by the floods, what better way of using the strong sandbags than turning them into furniture?

The sandbag transformation project is the brainchild of SCG Chemicals and Assistant Professor Singh Intrachooto, head of Kasetsart University’s Creative Centre for Ecodesign. 

The project has also won the support of Yuttana Anothaisintawee, eco designer and managing director of The ReMaker, a rising brand of recycled products. 

“The sandbags themselves are made from Polypropylene [PP], which can be completely recycled,” says Singh. “Our team is coordinating with Yuttana to study how we can to turn them into new materials.”

As with any recycling project, the team faces two major challenges. First, the sandbags are soft, making them difficult to manipulate. Secondly, the experimental process takes time due to the nature of the plastic waste. According to Singh, the more sandbags they can access, the more ideas they will be able to come up with.

The sand inside the bags is of no concern, he explains, as it can simply be transferred to construction sites.

Atcharee Patcharakitti, SCG Performance Chemicals’ designer, says the new material can be turned into furniture, binders and lamps.

Plastic sandbags are naturally macerated within one year, but the transformed material could last for two to three years, she says. 

The first process involves compression – heating up two iron sheets to 170 - 180 degrees Celsius and sandwiching the sandbags between them. The new material can then be shaped into the desired items when it cools down.

The ReMaker’s Yuttana is excited about the idea, saying 10 sandbags will be used for a stool and about 40 for a chair. He adds that in normal times, if these items were put on the market, his company could claim a 100-per-cent profit margin for the ideas alone. 

But Yuttana Jiamtragan, SCG Polyolefins’ managing director, says marketing is still way down the line. The project is still in the experimentation process, he points out, and the company has to buy sandbags.

SCG Polyolefins, a unit of SCG Chemicals, plans to urge chiefs of flooded communities to collect the materials and trade them with other useful items like eggs or rice. The company’s chief adds that other house owners could donate or sell the sandbags to SCG Chemicals.

Singh says that the team’s main focus now is to inspire people to join hands in turning waste into useful and valuable items. 

In the next stage, these items could be marketed with help from SCG Chemicals, which is also ready to cooperate with other industrial plants to help flood victims. 

 

HAVE ANY IDEAS?