How a Benin project is turning waste fabric into recycled 'gold'

Items being made at Colour Indigo workshop, a project that transforms waste fabric into decorative objects, in Ouidah. Photos: Yanick Folly/AFP

Every morning, Amake Yessoufou makes the rounds of the sewing workshops of Ouidah, a small coastal town in the south of Benin, and collects scraps of fabric used by tailors to make clothes.

In the past, waste fabric clogged up the gutters of Ouidah, but Yessoufou is part of one effort to change that culture and make the most of recycling materials.