by [Source]
A Filipino woman recently went viral for sharing a photo of a dress she is making with soda can pull tabs.
Richell Malibiran, a 43-year-old technical sergeant in the Philippine Air Force, caught the attention of thousands of Facebook users after posting about his current project on January 24.
Malibiran, who is a member of the public Facebook group Homepaslupa Buddies 3.0, asked its 1.1 million members to help donate zippers for its latest initiative. His post has already garnered more than 18,000 likes.
Speaking to NextShark, Malibiran said she started working on the dress in the second week of January 2022.
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Since then, she works there on weekends until five o’clock. On weekdays, she works there about two to three hours after work, usually between 8 and 10 p.m.
So far, she has used around 17,000 zippers.
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Malibiran shares that she dresscurrently trending on the Facebook group, is his third project.
She made her first dress using a cut method, in which she cut the upper part of the zippers to glue them together.
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For her second project, Malibiran used ribbons instead of cutting the tabs to tie them together. She notes that all of the dresses she has created are made from collected zippers.
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Malibiran aims to apply for a guinness world record after completing his current project.
“I really want to put my work in the Guinness Book of Records to help the Philippines get recognition and encourage others to recycle,” she told NextShark in Filipino.
She also shares that she was flooded with emotions after learning that her recent Facebook post received over 18,000 likes.
“I didn’t expect so many people to appreciate my work,” she says.
When asked if she considered sewing with zippers to be a hobbyMalibiran says this is part of his advocacy.
“I am a Coca-Cola collector, and recycling is part of my advocacy to protect Mother Earth. I inherited this trait from my siblings. My sister, a doll collector, also uses recycled materials to make dresses for her dolls.
Besides his family, Malibiran’s colleagues in the Philippine Air Force also show their support for him by helping him collect more zippers.
While recycling has been rooted in Malibiran and in her family since they were very young, the idea of creating a dress from zippers only came to her when her father fell ill.
Malibiran says collecting zipper pulls has sentimental value to her since her late father also loved collecting them.
“I told him that I would continue his collection and use them in exchange for a wheelchair, but the number needed for the tabs kept increasing every time we approached the quota,” she shares.
“So I bought my dad a used wheelchair instead and used the tabs we collected to make my first dress as a way to remember him. Most of the tabs used were from his collection.
