Corporate Gifts that Give Back from Monsoon Vermont

trashion — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:08:43 +0000

Green Corporate Gifts and Promotional Products

Let clients and customers know that you are playing a role in creating positive change within your community and the larger world.Monsoon Vermont offers a wide range of corporate gifts that demonstrate a company’s commitment to a broader social mission.

Monsoon Vermont Corporate Gifts won’t collect dust in the back of a customer’s desk along with the ubiquitious logo coffee mugs and tote bags.

In addition to all products pictured on our site, Monsoon Vermont offers customizable corporate gifts for orders over $300. To request a product list and price quotes of customizable corporate products, please send an email to trashionfashion@yahoo.com

with your name, contact information, type of product(s) you are interested in, approximate quantity and date needed.

You may also call Julia Genatossio, Director of Monsoon Vermont’s Corporate Giving Circle. She can be reached at 802-874-4149.

DETAILS ON MONSOON VERMONT CORPORATE GIFT and PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS:

Monsoon Vermont gifts identify your brand in ways your corporate logo or mission statement don’t reveal.

Your company supports:

*the creation of decent livlihoods for Jakarta’s scavenger community

*the education of consumers about the insideous nature of non-recyclable plastic packaging on the environment.

*empowerment of consumers to be environmental activists

In the manufacturing of Monsoon Vermont Goods we do not seek to mimic an industrial workplace where effeciency means profits at the expense of it’s workers.

Instead, we seek to honor the story of each person who scavenges, collages and sewsgarbage into functional works of art.

Each Monsoon Vermont item is handamde and unique.

Monsoon Vermont’s mission is to make garbage as valuable as rice, thus elevating trash pickers and scavengers socially and economically.

Julia Genatossio
www.monsoonvt.com
It’s time to turn things around.

Monsoon Vermont and the story of their Trashion

trashion — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:34:12 +0000

About Monsoon Vermont
Founded in 2005 by Julia Genatossio, Monsoon Vermont sells items made from nonrecyclable plastic collected by scavengers from the streets, landfills, and waterways of Jakarta, the capital city with more than 9 million inhabitants. The trash is triple-washed, then sewn collage style into messenger bags, wallets, umbrellas, computer bags, backpacks, shower curtains, wastebaskets, travel wallets, and more. Dubbed “Trashion™,” combining trash and fashion, the items create sustainable work for those at the bottom of the economic spectrum.

Before moving to Vermont, Genatossio worked in crisis management for Save the Children UK, where she developed sustainable businesses in Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and with the Bangladeshi community in London. Shopping one day in Brattleboro she found a simpler version of the bags she now designs. Genatossio recalls that when she saw the bag, she thought, “This is a story. Garbage!” She booked a flight to Indonesia and arrived two days after the tsunami hit the region in December 2004. In the chaos, she saw people collecting trash from landfills, and this solidified her vision.

Julia Genatossio
Founder of Monsoon Vermont
“The idea was to take the original bag I had seen to another level,” said Genatossio. “I looked at luxury designs by Louis Vuitton, FENDI and I studied the current designs showcased in Vogue and W. I wanted to integrate what the Indonesians started with a more high-end design. I knew we needed that deep of an economic niche for this to survive as a sustainable project.” Genatossio sends her designs and production orders to her production manager, Aswan Aditya in Jakarta. Aditya purchases trash from the scavenger community and turns the designs into reality at his Jakarta workshop, appropriately named Plastic Works.

“Our sewers are very talented, they used to work for Fendi and Chanel when they maintained factories in Indonesia. When these companies pulled out, only ghost factories were left, along with talented people who can do high-end finishing work,” said Genatossio. Our Monsoon Vermont bags use heavy gauge zippers and the interiors are lined with patterned satin fabrics. The exterior is a collage of products in a mix of English and Bahasa Indonesian languages, combining language and color in a way that creates visually interesting cross-cultural references.

“Traveling in Asia, all five senses are working all the time,” said Genatossio. “Our products are a microcosm of that, working on many levels linguistically, [and] stylistically . . . and they are useful objects.” Each piece features an individually made collage. Pak Haris, a man identified on the website as “an artist/master tailor/slum-dweller” who crafts Monsoon Vermont’s toiletry travel bags, is so inventive that Genatossio asked him to sign his work, which is sold in limited editions.

“Is it really garbage?” is a common question posed by visitors to the shop. What makes these textiles look new is what makes them potentially devastating to the environment: They never break down. According to Genatossio, there’s so much garbage in Jakarta that the people who live in the landfills can die in avalanches. In the ashen gray fields of garbage, the bright plastic colors are “almost like flowers.”

“My product creates a commodity from garbage,” she said. “The price per kilo is the same as paid for rice. This elevates the scavengers to the level of agricultural workers. It’s unspeakably wonderful. It has a profound effect on their lives. The scavengers are now very proud of themselves.”

Monsoon Vermont’s warehouse is attached to the Post Office in Jamaica, Vermont. The work is sold online and across the street in a boutique set up in the Jamaica Coffee House, where you can sip fair trade organic coffee six days a week (closed Wednesdays), from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

-Neece Regis
-Boston Globe Travel Writer

wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trashion

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Corporate Gifts that Give Back from Monsoon Vermont

Green Corporate Gifts and Promotional Products

Let clients and customers know that you are playing a role in creating positive change within your community and the larger world.Monsoon Vermont offers a wide range of corporate gifts that demonstrate a company’s commitment to a broader social mission.

Monsoon Vermont and the story of their Trashion

Hello world!