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[WATCH] Plastic shopping bags get melted down and turned into solar backpacks for South African kids

Repurpose is a Rustenburg company that makes backpacks for schoolkids that include a solar panel and batteries designed to give them electricity to study at night. And the remarkable thing is that that’s the least interesting thing there is to know about the company.

In the video below, the awesome Danine Naidoo from EDGE takes a tour of the Repurpose factory which provides jobs for local people by taking supermarket packets and turning them into schoolbags. The process involves bleaching the bags, melting them down then pressing them into a canvas which – if we’re honest – looks so remarkably high quality that it has to be messed up a bit with patchwork designs to look recycled.

The solar lighting system is simple – just the lid from a Consol jar lamp which charges during the day and can be used to read by at night. Ingenious.

This clip is from episode one of EDGE, which was shown last week on Channel ED (DStv 192 and GOtv 65 for the rest of Africa) for which htxt.africa acts as an exclusive editorial advisor. Episode two of the weekly show airs tonight at 7pm. Watch it. It’s really good.

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