Recycling Bags

Written by Alex

Background

You head over to the store, buy some groceries, and realize you forgot your handy re-usable bag. After realizing you can't carry all of your groceries home by hand, you give in, and use plastic bags. After a few occurances like this, you have a stockpile of plastic grocery bags at home that need to be taken care of! You've come to the right place. It's time to kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) and tackle your collection of bags and need for a re-usable bag with one solution.

Materials

This project is quite simple. You will need the following:
  • A clothing iron
  • Plastic bags (grocery, milk, etc...)
  • Parchment paper
  • An ironing board
  • A 2x4 piece of wood (if melting seams as opposed to sewing, see below)

Instructions

Briefly, you are melting bags together to create a new fabric that is thicker. This fabric will then be either melted or sewn at the seams to create a new re-usable plastic bag.

1. First off, you need to collect a massive amount of bags, and they need to be of the same kind. For example, if you're using grocery bags, make sure you stick with those. If you're using milk bags, don't incorporate grocery bags.

2. Cut your bags for maximum surface area. Lay a sheet of parchment paper larger than this surface area on top of the ironing board.

  • 6-8 sheets if using grocery bags
  • 3-4 sheets if using milk bags

    • 3. Cover the plastic bags with another equally large piece of parchment paper, and set your iron to about 3/4 of it's hottest temperature. Think positive thoughts as you wait for your iron to heat up. :)

    4. Place the iron on the parchment paper and iron in the same way that you would clothing. It is hard to know when to stop, as it is your first time, but with practice you will learn when the bags have been fused.

    5. When done, take the iron off and let the plastic cool between the parchment paper momentarily, and then peel off the parchment paper. Repeat steps 2-5 until you have a few pieces of fabric.

    6. Cut this new fabric into the desired shape, usually square or rectangular.

    7. You now have two options: sew the material or fuse the material. To sew the material, use a very thick thread and needle, and sew the fabric together to make a bag. To melt the seams, simply place the two seams one on top of another and melt them between parchment paper, on a 2x4 as shown in the image below.

    Stay Positive!
    Alex