In a refugee camp on the small Greek island of Lesbos, young Dutch volunteers are showing migrants how to transform inflatable boats and life vests into napsacks.
"It's a good idea to make a bag from the boat," 19-year-old Syrian refugee Amani told Radio Free Europe's Daniella Cheslow. "You kill the boat that tried to kill you."
Lesbos is a popular pit-stop for people fleeing the Middle East, and some 600,000 migrants have washed ashore since the refugee crisis began. En route to western Europe, the refugees often abandon the rubber dinghies and ditch their puffy, orange life vests on the beach. About seven cubic miles of plastic has piled on the island.
When Amsterdam native and volunteer Floor Nagler, 24, noticed that many disembarked the boats without backpacks to contain their few belongings and travel papers, an idea sparked.
"I saw the excessive amount of material that's left behind on the beaches," Nagler tells Cheslow, "and me, as a maker, I was of course extremely inspired to design a bag that's put together with the least effort."
She returned to Amsterdam with over 40 pounds of boat material and teamed up fellow Dutch artist Didi Aaslund, 27, to figure out what could be done. They came up with a napsack that could be constructed using only a pair of scissors, punch pliers, and a rivet gun, a tool that holds together metal fasteners.
The "upcycled" bags look like waterproof, military-grade versions of the famous Herschel sacks, with straps from life vests closing them shut. Each costs around $3 to make.
Nagler and Aaslund returned to Lesbos in February, where they've been hosting workshops outside a reception center since. They plan to leave behind materials when they depart in March.
"Making it, designing it, working on it — it's effortless because we are having so much fun," Nafler says. "It feels like this is the right thing for us to do."
Amos Chapple, a photographer with Radio Free Europe, shared a video of the project exclusively with Tech Insider. Read the full story here.
