Mexican Camilo Morales creates bags with political canvases

Fashion designer Camilo Morales has recycled everything from plastic shopping bags to fabric scraps into bags, clothing and accessories.

Its latest raw material is the political advertising vinyls of the candidates for the local, state and federal elections in Mexico, which took place a week ago.

Among the winners was Claudia Sheinbaum, former head of government of Mexico City, who will be the country’s first female president.

For the past year, Morales has been removing the ubiquitous banners, removing scissors and sewing them into tote bags, which he sells for between 100 and 600 pesos.

“This election season was ridiculous,” Morales said. “They started (posting ads) very early.”

Morales’ cheaper bags, sold under its Rere brand, use an all-white background in most ads. The most expensive is a collage of the heavily shaded eyes of Clara Brugada, the elected head of government of Mexico City.

“I joked that they practically grew on trees,” Morales said. “At night I removed an ad and the next day there was another one that took its place.”

According to the electoral law, political parties have four days after the elections end to withdraw their ads, and workers were removing them this week.

In Mexico City alone, it is estimated that this season some 10 thousand tons of garbage were produced due to political advertising, according to Juan Manuel Núñez, professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana.

The banners have logos marking them as recyclable, but it was unclear how many were actually being recycled.

“Although they are promoted as environmentally friendly, these banners and tarps are typically made of PVC, which can take hundreds of years to decompose,” Núñez said.

Other efforts to find new uses for the ads included a TikTok user who went viral for turning them into dog beds and immigrants turning them into tents.

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To know

• If you would like to know more about Camilo Morales’ work, you can follow his online store Rere Mx. In it he presents clothing and items made from recycled materials.