Former Manchester festival queen turns trash into treasure

Last year, before Crystal Scale won the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) Festival Queen competition for Manchester, she thought of a project that could help tackle pollution in Jamaica. It was then that Transforming Trash To Treasure was born.

The idea behind this was driven by her need to find an innovative way to create useful objects from trash. The concept is not new, but Scale decided that she too could help to curb pollution on the island. She said before her launch in December, she hosted a think-tank session at a school where she received suggestions on how the project could be impactful.

“I went to McIntosh Memorial Primary in Manchester and did a workshop with the environmental club. We were teaching the students a way of up-cycling and looking into other ways to using the materials to make other things. It was a great learning experience. We achieved our objective of providing education in terms of what is the nature of plastic pollution in Jamaica, and what are the practical efforts being taken to minimise plastic pollution. They (the children) were very interested and they gave us some good suggestions and feedback,” she said.

Scale said that her team began collecting plastic bags to make sleeping mats for homeless people. She said that at first, the aim was to give sleeping mats to homeless people on the street but shifted the strategy and began distributing the mats at drop-in shelters.

One sleeping mat would require close to 300 scandal bags.

“All the bags are donations. Before, we had scandal bags but now because of the ban, they are not easily accessible, so we are looking into using other bags such as bread bags, tissue bags or packaging bags to make more mats. The mats are made so they can fold and move, so it can be easily rolled up like a yoga mat to be carried,” she said.

Scale told The CENTRAL STAR that reusing plastic bags is just phase one of her Transforming Trash to Treasure project.

“We are looking at fabrics too; for example, the dressmaker throws away the excess fabric that they cannot use. We take these fabrics and make something for the home. We combine it with plastic to make floor mats or use it with cement to create decorative holders such as a flower pot or centrepiece or even a gift basket,” she said.