There is a lot of attention on the evils of the lowly plastic bag in the media, with whole towns working together to prevent shops handing them out to customers. They do have an environmental impact that is of great concern, especially for marine life and landfill sites. As a fairly recent invention, as I remember everyone used to take their shopping bag with them, and there is a very sensible move to return to this practise, like deposits on pop bottles, which was a way for kids to earn some sweetie money.
Remebering to take your shopping bags with you is not always possible, and does not account for those impromptu moments when you have no carrying device on you.
I decided that recycling my bags was not very creative, so referring to a womens magaine idea from the 70's I started to crochet with the bags- not to make another bag as in the original pattern- but small bowls and pots. I learnt quickly that supermarket bags are much easier to use than the heavier department store bags which hurt your fingers. The brighter coloured bags are more effective. The resulting items have some novelty value, being recycled, recyclable and eco friendly etc.. but what I was not expecting was how quickly I ran out of plastic bags. They are really very thin and it takes two bags to make a small item.
I no longer had any bags for my bins, my other recycling, the compost, dog muck etc...I found myself putting fewer items in supermarket bags so i could crochet them later, which is clearly beside the point!
Life without the freely available plastic bag was inconvenient, and the thought of having to buy plastic bin liners, and adding to the plastic bag demand in a differnet way did not sit well on my conscience or my pocket. So now I do not crochet plastic bags, but use them for the job they were designed for a that they do exceptionally well.
So in conclusion, I would miss the free bags, I have become dependant on them and the only way forward is to make them bio-degradable from vegetable oil so we can use them sensibly and sustainably. Perhaps we should concentrate on the use of polystyrene as you can't crochet those!
Long live the plastic bag.
1 comment:
I agree that the thinner supermarket bags are easier to work with. I found this when I tried to knit a bag from plastic bags, but again it did hurt the fingers. And yes, they do have further uses as bags but they do need to be bio-degradable.
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