Cardboard Box Tbilisi [LATEST]

Local NGOs like distribute thicker sleeping mats, but many still rely on the omnipresent cardboard box for survival. It is a quiet, desperate testament to the material’s role in the city’s social fabric. The Future: From Waste to Design Interestingly, Tbilisi is now seeing a small but growing movement to upcycle cardboard into high-end products. Startups like Cardboard.ge and design students from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts are creating furniture, children’s toys, and even eco-friendly cat houses from recycled local cardboard.

In Georgia’s post-Soviet era, the cardboard box became the foundation of the “Cherkizovsky” market mentality—a low-cost, mobile infrastructure. When police raids were common in the 1990s and early 2000s, a vendor could fold up their entire inventory inside a single cardboard box and run. Even today, in Tbilisi’s more regulated economy, the box remains the ultimate symbol of the petty entrepreneur : adaptable, disposable, and everywhere. Unlike in Western cities where cardboard is compacted into blue recycling bins, Tbilisi has a thriving informal recycling ecosystem. Elderly men and women, often called "farnakebi" (rag-and-bone men), pull two-wheeled carts through residential areas like Gldani or Nadzaladevi . Their mission? To collect every discarded cardboard box. cardboard box tbilisi

Local artists argue that cardboard is the perfect medium for a city in transition. It is cheap, accessible, and imperfect—much like the raw beauty of Tbilisi’s crumbling balconies and Soviet-era architecture. One notable project, "Boxed City" (2022), saw artist Gio Sumbadze build a 1:1 replica of a typical Tbilisi courtyard dvor using recycled cardboard, complete with hanging laundry and a rusty swing. The piece was a commentary on impermanence: in a city where historic buildings are constantly being demolished for glass towers, cardboard reminds us that nothing lasts forever. There is also a darker side. On any cold winter night, beneath the Dry Bridge or inside the abandoned construction sites near Tamarashvili Street , you might see a different kind of cardboard box structure: a makeshift shelter. Tbilisi has a visible homeless population, often elderly or displaced, who use flattened cardboard as insulation against the freezing Georgian winter. Layers of cardboard between a person and the concrete pavement can save lives when temperatures drop to -10°C. Local NGOs like distribute thicker sleeping mats, but