Too many old plastic bags? Fuse ‘em!

Written by Erica. Filed Under environment, random

Some of our commenters the other day said that they recycle their plastic bags after they use them. This got me thinking. What the heck are plastic bags recycled into? Well, it didnt take me long to find out. The answer?

More plastic bags.

Shocking, isn’t it? It’s not as bad as it sounds though! Many companies and people recycle them into reusable bags. As Martha Stewart would say (I can’t believe I’m quoting Martha!), it’s a good thing.

The coolest part of my lil investigation is that you can actually recycle your flimsy grocery bags into strong, reusable bags yourself by fusing them together! In fact, Etsy Labs has a whole tutorial on how to do this. Here’s what you need:

Plastic bags
An iron (and ironing board)
Parchment paper
A well ventilated area (seriously, ventilation people! You can’t fuse plastic bags if you’re passed out from the fumes!)

…you didn’t really think I was going to reproduce the entire tutorial here, did you? No way - this is all from Etsy Labs and they get the credit for this awesome plastic bag fusing tutorial.

In the US, Target is recycling their own plastic bags. Well, sort of. Their recycled bags are being sold in their US stores - the actual recycling of said bags happens in…Vietnam?

Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of recycling? OK, well not the main purpose of recycling itself, but at least one of the purposes - to cut down on unnecessary emissions produced by factories and transport vehicles. How efficient is it to collect the bags in North America, send the bags to Vietnam for recycling, and them bring ‘em back?

Maybe I’m wrong about this because I do see that the recycling project is being done in partnership with Terracycle, a very cool recycling/re-purposing company. I’ve known about them for some time now - they have a great program where if you collect things like empty beverage bottles and send them to Terracycle they will donate money to charity! The bottles are cleaned and filled with organic fertilizer - “Worm Poop” - and then sold. Their recycling facility is in New Jersey.

My final note for the day - sure, plastic bags suck. But without them, there wouldn’t be that great opening scene in American Beauty, would there?

It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.

UPDATE:

Scroll down to the very bottom of this post at From My Bottom Step for links to resources regarding knitting plastic bags!

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Comments

2 Responses to “Too many old plastic bags? Fuse ‘em!”

fragileheart on May 10th, 2008 12:44 pm

This post fills me with all sorts of happy. Good to know they’re not just going into the landfills
The latest stylings of fragileheart…Baba O’Reilly
Jim Spence on June 9th, 2008 12:57 am

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