Students ramp with recycled costumes; CIT-U wins contest
College students from three universities in Cebu City ramped with their costumes made from discarded tarpaulins, sacks, papers and other waste materials during the 1st Green Fashion Revolution organized by the Aboitiz Foundation scholars.
The fashion show held last Sept. 21 at the SM City Cebu Trade Hall tapped business units of the Aboitiz Equity Ventures in Cebu City to provide the recyclable materials.
The team from Cebu Institute of Technology-University (CIT-U) was proclaimed champion for coming up with clothing pieces made of twisted papers placed against mosquito nets.
Entries from the University of San Carlos (USC) and Cebu Normal University (CNU) won first and second runners-up.
The CIT-U team received P20,000 while its partner community, barangay Labangon will be given a seed money of P40,000 to implement the students’ chosen project.
Philip Celerines, a Civil Engineering student who led the CIT-U group and who designed the dresses, said they will coordinate with the foundation in implementing their aquaphonics project, a method of propagating crops using only water. He said they plan to breed freshwater fish and grow vegetable crops, with the fish waste used as fertilizers for the crops. Women in the barangay will then be tapped to use these crops either for their consumption or by selling them for their livelihood.
The fashion show was the second phase of implementation of the proposal of Aboitiz Foundation scholars Charry Dela Cruz, Aldrich Noble, Chumescene Rebadomia, Aimee Sevilleno and Maxine Ann Taveros of USC. The said proposal was one of three winners of the 1st Aboitiz Scholars’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Summit in December last year.
The team from USC was given a seed money of P200,000 to start their own project.
Sevilleno said they pushed for the fashion show to promote the Aboitiz Group’s five sustainability pillars: rejuvenate nature, reduce consumption, recycle or re-use, recharge communities and use of renewable energy.
