A Christmas Factory in the heart of Afghanistan

In 2020, I started a business with zero cash and zero experience, just to fund a family campervan trip.

By 2024, it became a woman-owned factory in Kabul, Afghanistan, providing an economic lifeline to women under the Taliban regime.

This is the story of Waste-Free Celebrations
https://www.wastefreecelebrations.com

I’d been using fabric gift bags for years. To earn money for our holiday, I bought some Christmas cotton, built my own website, and posted the link on Facebook.

I figured, "Why not?" and went to bed.

I woke up to a dead phone. The constant ping of sales notifications had crashed it.

I was such a novice, I hadn't even set an inventory limit. I had sold hundreds of bags that didn't exist.

I did what anyone with zero experience but bullish determination would do. I bought out all the Christmas fabric in New Zealand. I hired 12 local women to sew. I cut fabric on my dining table until 3 AM every night.

I was fuelled by sheer determination (and, let's be honest, Central Otago pinot noir). This. Would. Work. But this was about more than just bags. I love celebrations, but I hate the waste.

Every year, the US uses enough single-use wrapping paper to get to the moon and back... NINE TIMES.

How can we celebrate with all the colour and fun, without compromising our planet?

We grew. We even hired Afghan refugee women in New Zealand, which felt right (I used to be a humanitarian worker in Kabul).

But after 3 years, we faced a hard reality: NZ manufacturing was too expensive. We had to close the business or move offshore.

We considered China for about 3 minutes. But the answer was staring me in the face.

Our Head of Production, Rahila.

She arrived in NZ as a refugee in 2014, a widow with 6 children and a year 6 education. Now, she wanted to return to Kabul to be with her mother.

She volunteered to go back and lead our entire production.

Ten years after fleeing Afghanistan, Rahila returned.

In January 2024, she registered our business as woman-owned (with full support from the Taliban, to our surprise).

She found the premises, bought the machines, installed solar power, and hired the staff. Her learning curve wasn't steep—it was vertical.

Today, 26 women are sewing for us in Kabul. We could hire four times that many if we had more machines.

What is a fun, reusable Christmas cracker for you... ...is an economic lifeline of hope for a woman in Afghanistan.

We wish you a merry, waste-free celebration.