yes i know i am wasted.

and thats exactly why i need a haven from doing absoeffinglutely nothing. (thanks to ms chanwan for helping me to master the art of swearing so well.)

like i've said in my first post, i need this blog so badly, cos one of the reasons is that my article got rejected, and therefore I am here to be my own publisher! and here it is - i have to start using material from my little storage:

When Fashion Goes Eco-Friendly

What does newspaper mean to you? News, news and more news, literally papers of news? A subscription that you are made to make? Or some scrap paper to wrap up food remains before

sposing of? To Mr. Wong, newspaper has become his innovation in his bag-making career.

In the midst of city-wandering on a chilly Sunday with scattered showers, a few friends of mine and I got lost in the middle of the SoHo district in Central, trying to figure out where the famous-for-antique Hollywood Road is. Instead of looking for a map, my friend led us to try an error by passing through a narrow alley while I was still wondering if that is safe, especially when the street is utterly quiet with trucks unloading goods. Most of the shops were closed, but except one – a bright little shop with glaring florescent lighting out of the dark lane, with some tote bags dangling at the front of the store and a simple charcoal logo that reads “RECYCLED” with the first ‘E’ flipped to the left and uniquely in green.

We went into the shop out of curiosity, and as we took a closer look, these bags are no ordinary totes. The bags indeed were outlined by leather and buckles, but surprisingly you will be able to find large and small fonts here and there upside-down. If you are lucky, you may even find images like Obama’s big-headed pictures. The shop has got its name right – the bags are in fact made of newspapers, literally recycling uncontaminated, wasted papers.

A lot of bags these days are claimed to be made of eco-friendly materials that can be completely dissolved when discarded into soil, or even written boldly in fancy fonts to tell it is not a plastic bag. But these newspaper bags themselves have already carried the message – one that is much stronger, crystal-clear and more obvious to be easily understood in a glance.

‘You can feel the weather getting hot. Christmas in Hong Kong used to be cold, and I’m wearing T-shirts these days.’ said Mr. Max Wong, the shopkeeper as well as inventor of RECYCLED Bags, ‘Newspaper is something every family will use and everyone accepts. Who doesn’t? And it can be recycled. We could have saved a lot of paper by making good use of it. I just got these (newspapers) from the hotel next door. They (his products) turn out to be quite fashionable, don’t they?’

Not only is newspaper used for Mr. Wong’s bags, but a wide variety of recycled material ranges from traditional Cantonese rice bags to the red-white-blue canvas bag. If you still find these too dull and conventional, you can try the purses with bright tropic colours and shiny surface which are made of DHL express card boxes.

‘We are now also having Kowloon Dairy’s sponsorship.’ he said, as he showed me cardboards printed with the green skimmed-milk cartons we see every day in supermarkets. ‘They are sponsoring us for free, asking if we can turn these into bags.’

True, RECYCLED may be a small creative industry, but its sale is surprisingly fair. Celebrities like famous singer Nicolas Tse, the elder twin of the local ‘maverick film directors’ Peng Shun, Model Ankie Beilke have also shown their support for RECYCLED bags by purchasing several purses all at a time. ‘Westerners like the design. I guess they find it meaningful with traces of the Hong Kong style.’

Well, who knows? Maybe recycled materials and eco-friendly purses will be the vogue for the new decade. Girls, save yourselves some quotas from bland branded designers – an insightful yet chic design awaiting your appreciation and, of course, guilt-free usage!

(oh and you can actually carry Obama around! :P)

edit: after serious consideration and a revisit to the shop, i have decided not to advertise the shop, and therefore the address of the shop is deleted. i'll further explain on that in the next post. pls note that the focus of uploading this article to share my hardwork and to seek recognition of my dedication to writing. thank you so much, my fellow subscribers and passers-by.