Fashion designer Camilo Morales is recycling everything from plastic shopping bags to fabric scraps, transforming them into handbags, clothing, and accessories. His latest raw material is election campaign banners for candidates in the local, state, and federal elections in Mexico, which took place on Sunday. Among the winners is Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, who will be the first woman to lead the country.
For the past year, Morales has been removing the ubiquitous banners, redesigning, sewing, and turning them into handbags sold at prices ranging from 100 pesos ($5.44) to 600 pesos ($32.63). The cheapest bags from Morales, sold under his brand "Riri," utilize the full white background of most advertisements. His most expensive bags feature a collage of images of Clara Brugada, the ruling party candidate expected to become the next mayor of Mexico City.
Under Mexican election law, political parties have four days after the elections to remove their advertisements, and sanitation workers focused on this task this week. In Mexico City alone, approximately 10,000 tons of waste were produced from political advertising this season, according to Juan Manuel Núñez, a professor at the Ibero-American University. The banners carry slogans indicating they are recyclable, but it was unclear how many banners have actually been recycled. Núñez stated, "Despite being promoted as environmentally friendly, these banners and fabrics are usually made of vinyl, which can take hundreds of years to decompose."
Other efforts to find new uses for advertisement banners included a viral TikTok account that succeeded in turning them into dog beds, as well as migrants who converted them into tents.
