Emma Henderson
After a long running campaign to ban plastic bags in the U.K, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced this week a plan to introduce a tax on plastic bags.
Fantastic news! We can rid the country of an ugly, harmful menace and give ourselves a big slap on the back whilst carrying our shopping home in natural resuable bags. Great!
Or… is it really all that great? Am I the only one who might be a little bit sad to see them go? I won’t miss the bags themselves but I will miss the creativity they inspire.
Flicking through the pages of this month’s Elle Decoration, I came across an article about Laura Marsden’s beautiful ‘Eternal Lace’. She has invented a substance – and the main ingredient is the much-maligned plastic bag. She uses it to make sculptural jewellery, home accessories and wall pieces.
These intricate hand stitched forms appear wonderfully delicate and you would never imagine they have been made from plastic bags. You can see more of Laura’s work on her website.
But of course the list is endless, and the possibilities for re-using plastic bags seem limitless.
Victoria posted recently on organisations offering tutorials for weaving plastic bags and Roger2435 points us in the direction of 19 ways to recycle plastic grocery bags.
And what will become of the amazing Binvention (left)?
I’ve just spent the whole morning winding plastic bags into yarn. All of those are great and creative ideas, but I really wish I could find something to do with the scraps left over from making the plastic yarn (the bottom seam and the handles). Have you seen any ideas for that? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would still feel wasteful just throwing those parts away or trying to recycle them.
How about saving them up and using them as stuffing?
I once saw a lovely draft excluder which used old plastic bags as stuffing, I thought was a great Idea.