Make Your Own Reusable Bag!

One of the most quick-catching green habits (notice I didn’t say trends) is the reusable bag.

It’s old news that carrying your own bags for groceries, clothes shopping, as lunch “boxes” etc is a great way to cut down on plastic and paper waste.
But what about taking this action a step further and creating your own reusable bags from materials around the home?

That’s what Valerie Frazier of Langhorne, PA does. “Going out and purchasing a manufactured bag seemed as though it was adding to the problem of too much stuff in the world,” Valerie said. So, she decided to find a way to use her big ol stash of grocery bags.
The result?

Valerie has created an ‘Uber-reusable homemade shopping’ bag. So far she’s made one for each car so there “will be no excuses about forgetting to bring it when going shopping, and will certainly be making them as gifts for green friends!”

While Val is the first to say the bags aren’t the most elegant or aesthetically pleasing ( I still find them pretty cool!) – she says that her bags really do the job. Plus, she’s taking materials that would typically go to waste & creating a long-lasting recyclable item.

Interested in making your own bags?
Check out this guide  on making your own bag  that Valerie passed along for a tutorial on getting started.

Some of Val’s tips:
• A quick improvement from the tutorial is to stack about 5-6 bags on top of each other before folding and cutting. You can make a lot of loops very quickly that way.
• It takes about 30 minutes to make a ball of yarn from about 20 bags
• Valerie made the handles out of heavy plastic strips, folded over several times for strength and padding- and stapled to the bag. “I think I can come up with something a bit more elegant next time, but it works fine and is easy on the hands,” she said.

A cool way to take an already green initiative further. Makes you think about all the resources around us we might be able to use in another way…

Posted by Beth

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Beth is a Health and Wellness expert who believes sustainability goes hand-in-hand with self care. She’s the girl whipping up kombucha cocktails at parties, and extolling the benefits of canning vegetables to anyone who will listen. View all posts by Beth Funari