Buy Our Paper Bags to Fight Plastic – and Help Us Survive, Ethiopians Ask in Sign Language

An Ethiopian company is fighting single-use plastic bags using sign language, selling paper alternatives that help support both the environment as well as the deaf community.

Teki Paper Bags, developed by deaf women, believes that “signs speak louder than words”, and that business owners are more likely to invest in greener bags when there are both environmental and social benefits involved.

“With our paper bags we want to provide people with the opportunity to change the lives of deaf people, and through this create an alternative way to fight plastic,” explains co-founder Clement Piguet.

The social and environmental enterprise currently has 18 full-time deaf employees, along with two interpreters, serving over 50 clients, and has sold around a million handmade paper bags to date. Piguet and co-manager Mimi Legesse say the company’s long-term dream “is to initiate the hearing impaired, not just in Africa, but all around the world to fight plastic.”