Medellin town advocates recycling with ‘festive’ doormats

Some of the colorful doormats that were produced by street cleaners in Medellin town. | Photo courtesy of the Municipality of Medellin Cebu

CEBU CITY, Philippines—Three of their street cleaners started the mission of producing doormats which they could use at the municipal hall.

Now, they are already getting requests from Cebuanos who wanted to purchase their “festive” doormats, said Bambi Pacquiao, a consultant for town’s tourism and promotions office.

Pacquiao said she is happy with the attention that their doormats had been getting because this will open revenue-generating opportunities for town residents who are also hurting from the ill effects of the pandemic.

“We only started working a week ago for the doormats with three workers, actually street cleaners who can sew. The intention was to make doormats for the munisipyo (municipal hall),” Pacquiao told CDN Digital.

She came up with the idea of producing mutli-colored doormats, which she referred to as their town’s “festive” doormats because of the availability of scrap cloth from the face mask production that they earlier had.

“They [the cloth that we used in producing doormats) are retazos from the mask project we had earlier wherein we fabricated more than 20,000 masks [that were] given out to the constituents,” she said.

Pacquiao, a recycling advocate, said they then tapped the three street cleaners to help her start a project that will make use of their scrap cloth.

She wanted other town residents to see the importance recycling and to also adopt this in their respective homes by turning waste into something useful and valuable.

“I advocate recycling and l like to share that mindset with street cleaners who deal with garbage every day plus the munisipyo needs more doormats as we constantly are faced with dirty floors because of the decon footbaths at the entrance. So, instead of buying, why not make them!” said Pacquiao.

Even before photos of the doormats were posted on the town’s Facebook page on Monday, Pacquiao said, they had already been getting several inquiries from people who wanted to purchase their doormats.

After a week of work, Pacquaio said that they already produced around 50 doormats.

Pacquiao is asking interested buyers to wait for further announcements on how they can purchase these items.

She said that they are yet to fix its prices and come up with a scheme on how its proceeds would be able to help the street cleaners and other town employees who are also affected by the pandemic. / dcb