Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 31) — Environmentalists and fashionistas alike will enjoy a collaboration between advocacy group Hope in a Bottle and actress and model Solenn Heussaff – a limited edition shirt made out of recycled bottles.
Speaking to CNN Philippines’ The Source, Hope founder Nanette Medved-Po said the project, dubbed Hope in a Shirt, was aimed at raising environmental awareness.
“We decided to do something really fun… so we just introduced a very limited edition shirt. It’s a t-shirt which is made of a hundred percent recycled plastic bottles,” Medved-Po said.
“Even if we’re in the bottled water business, we’re super conscious about plastic and recycling. And so we introduced this shirt as an awareness-raising exercise with Solenn,” she added.
The graphic print shirts, each of which are made out of 11 plastic bottles, will be offered for a limited time. Remaining stocks are available through online shopping site Zalora.
Forbes Magazine in its July 2017 issue listed Medved-Po, a former actress and model who was the title star of Joel Lamangan’s 1991 film Darna, as one of Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy.
She founded Generation Hope, which sells purified drinking water and donates all its profits to Friends of Hope. The proceeds then go to the construction of public school classrooms.
According to its website, the organization has sold over 9 million bottles and built over 37 classrooms. Medved-Po said that around 20 more classrooms will be finished by the end of the year.
The Alliance of the Concerned Teachers-Philippines raised concern in 2015 that the country was short of almost 68,000 classrooms.
“I think we make incremental changes, or incremental improvements in closing the classroom gap,” said Medved-Po. “But… the big goal here is not classrooms. I think the big goal here is changing a mindset.”
She said she hopes big companies can create social engagements beyond corporate social responsibility, or the company’s initiatives for regulating their environmental and social effects.
She also wants the public to realize “they can vote with their peso about what’s important to them.”
“When the business community sees that people actually care to support companies that not only look after profitability, but are interested in… making sure that there is a social good… they will then become maybe encouraged,” said Medved-Po.
“If we can inspire other companies to support whatever it is they wanna support… malnutrition, education, farmers, or whatever it is… if companies can look at creating shared value over the long term, I think that’s the goal,” she added.
