Richard Ng is giving plastic waste a second life

A discarded coffee sachet might seem worthless to most, but Richard Ng sees the makings of a bag.

With patience, a pair of scissors in hand and a little ingenuity, the 68-year-old Ipoh native transforms plastic packaging into colourful woven bags, tissue holders and other useful household items.

His creations are more than a craft project. They reflect a larger mission to reduce plastic waste while showing communities that the things they throw away may still have value.

“I was not always an environmentalist but somebody has to do this,” he said of his work, which began almost by accident.

The 68-year-old, who holds a PhD in business administration and spent 17 years with Open University Malaysia, said it all started when his daughter returned from university with two big bags of mineral water bottles.

“I asked her what she was doing with them, and she told me she was collecting them for recycling,” the grandfather of two said.

The idea stayed with him. In 2014, when a dengue outbreak in Perak’s Kinta district prompted an anti-dengue campaign, Ng and his NGO, Ipoh City Watch, discovered 22 illegal dumping sites in Jelapang Tambahan.

“We decided to educate the public not to throw garbage. So how do we educate them? Let’s start with a recycling project,” he recalled.

Residents were encouraged to bring in recyclable materials in exchange for cash. The project ran for two years, but Ng realised there was a limit to what conventional recycling could achieve.

“Nobody will buy plastic bottles. They may pay 40 sen per kilo, but if you bring back two big bags, maybe you get less than RM1. Who is going to collect all this for less than a ringgit?”

The problem nagged at him. Then, in 2019, while working in Bangi, he began looking through rubbish bins at laundrettes.

“I found a lot of recyclables, including aluminium cans, but I focused on the plastic detergent bags,” said Ng. “They were colourful, and the quality was good. I was thinking, what should we do with these bags?”

He turned to YouTube and found someone weaving plastic packaging into decorative bags. For weeks, he watched tutorials and experimented with the technique. Each day after work, he would clean, dry and cut the packaging before folding it into small units that could be woven together.

His first successful creation, said Ng, was a bag made from coffee sachets, big enough to hold a 500ml bottle. He later used detergent packets to make a tissue holder.

“One bag requires more than 100 pieces of the coffee sachets,” he pointed out. A tissue holder, meanwhile, uses about 11 plastic bags.

The work is time-consuming, but Ng sees every finished product as an opportunity to keep plastic out of landfills.

After retiring in 2019, he began holding workshops in Ipoh, training more than 100 people, mostly single mothers, to weave discarded materials into products.

He also collects used rice bags from restaurants. Initially, he paid for them; later, he offered to exchange them for biodegradable rubbish bags. Getting people to change their habits, however, remains his biggest challenge.

“Many people say, ‘What you’re doing is good’, but they never practise it,” he said. At Kinta Heights, he has found a way to encourage residents to recycle by giving them groceries in exchange for bringing in recyclable items.

The initiative costs money, he says, but the real reward is seeing residents change their behaviour.

“When they see me at my office, they bring the recyclables automatically. I’m very happy that their mindset has changed,” Ng beamed.

He now hopes to revive his weaving workshops and use social media platforms such as TikTok to reach more people. He plans to train participants for free and buy their finished products if they meet his quality standards.

For Ng, the work is ultimately about what this generation leaves behind. He has planted more than 150 trees and teaches schoolchildren about recycling.

“Let’s be good ancestors,” he said. “People may not remember who planted the trees, but whatever you planted gives shade and protection.”

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