An Eco-bag Full of News!

CBP (Carrot Banana Peach) recycles Bombay Times and helps former drug users with their “sankalp� or resolve.

Sankalp Rehabilitation Trust is an organization that believes that everyone is a creature of the universe and has a right to be here. However low they fall, however high the dependency, Sankalp has shown that treating drug users with respect can change their lives.

This belief is the bedrock of all Sankalp’s activities. Total abstinence may not be an achievable goal in many cases, but drug users can be empowered to make life-altering decisions. They can make their way, step by step, to a drug-free lifestyle.

Sankalp’s interventions are client centered and built on a genuine respect for the individual. They found that the turning point comes when drug users reach deep within themselves to find the “sankalp�, or resolve, to pick themselves up and start all over again.

An empty stomach can be as much of a devil’s workshop as an empty mind. Making their clients self reliant, is therefore, as much of an objective for them as is improving their health. Sankalp’s income generation program holds activities so that clients can get varied opportunities and exposure to learn, develop and attempt marketing strategies. Clients from drop-in centres and community care centres who were keen to learn skills, were trained to make phenyl lanterns, paper bags, religious artifacts, leather bags and shoes.

The paper bags began with ordinary newspaper bags for the lower end market and moved into those of handmade paper. With orders not easy to come by, the patients began making as per clients’ custom specifications and tied up with a street children partner organization to do the printing.

The recycled newspaper carrier bags fulfilled CBP's twin objectives of charity giving and minimizing the company’s impact on the environment by using recycled materials. “We at CBP wanted to generate income for the impoverished and needy. The newspaper bags are totally recycled and eco-friendly,� says CBP’s brand evangelist Simrin Malik. “So we approached Sankalp to make our carrier bags and working with Sankalp was indeed a “win-win� situation for all of us.�