Be kind, unwind: VHS tapes are weaving magic
Discarded video cassettes can be woven into something beautiful. The same can’t be said for memory sticks.
Pierra Nyaruai in Nakuru
At Gioto dumpsite on the outskirts of Nakuru, Rahab Njeri and her colleagues – Grace Nyambura and her cousin, also named Grace Nyambura – bend over a mound of waste. They are sorting through a bale of discarded items in search of old VHS cassettes. The women are weavers who will make kiondos from the black magnetic tape in the cassettes.
Traditionally, Kenya’s kiondos – handwoven bags – are made from sisal. But the VHS tapes that reach Gioto from decluttered homes, donation drives, and second-hand mitumba “miscellaneous” bales now supply an unlikely substitute. The bales, sourced locally or imported, contain all manner of unsorted items that retailers spill onto open racks, hoping buyers will spot something valuable. Most do not. They become dead stock – another word for trash – and eventually end up here.
The tapes represent a technology that has outlived its usefulness in its original form. The VCRs that once played them are long gone, replaced by DVDs, then streaming services. But the tapes themselves persist, their plastic casings and magnetic film designed to last far longer than their cultural relevance.
The owner of one VHS shop on Nakuru’s Kanu Street lets The Continent see hundreds of tapes gathering dust on shelves of his once popular video library. “I loved this shop. I ran it from the late 1980s all through the 2000s,” says the owner, who didn’t want to give his full name. “Now, I try to sell off [the tapes] but no one wants them anymore. I don’t want to throw them out just yet.”
Meticulous work
Njeri and her colleagues have been crocheting since the year 2000. “We were taught by our mothers, using wooden crochet sticks and plastic bags. We just want to raise our children without begging or stealing,” says Njeri.
However, Kenya’s ban on single-use plastic in 2017 resulted in a shortage of their source material. They struggled until they discovered they could make bags from the film in old VHS tapes. The durability of the magnetic tape and slight sheen give the bags a distinctive appearance. Sometimes they weave in a discarded ribbon to give the bag’s pattern contrast.
The work is meticulous, as VHS tapes are complex e-waste artefacts. Each cassette comprises a plastic casing housing the magnetic tape, as well as metal springs, screws, and felt pads. The tape must be carefully extracted from its casing, cut to workable lengths, and woven with other materials to create the bag’s structure.
Yet even as Gioto’s artisans repurpose the tape, the plastic casings and metal components remain, persisting in landfills for centuries and leaching chemicals into soil and water.
The women sell each bag for 500 Kenyan shillings ($3.85). “We have been considering going to local craft markets, but most of them charge a vending fee and we cannot afford those logistical costs,” Njeri says.
Instead, they sell the bags directly to customers. Even that was a price that they fought to establish after years of exploitation. For a while, a middleman purchased their kiondos for 250 shillings and they heard he was reselling them in Nairobi at double the price. Online, similar products are retailing as upcycled handbags for as much as $45.
Despite their hardship, the women here have created a network of mutual support in a place most people think of only as a dumpsite. But as yesterday’s essential gadgets become today’s waste, Gioto’s upcyclers now face a rising tide of devices too complex to dismantle and too toxic to reclaim.