My family is on a great big road trip this month, and yes, we are eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, granola bars, cups of yogurt, and bananas.
And yes, we are also eating the occasional burger and fries, the occasional fast-food burrito, the occasional bag of Skittles, and the occasional bag of chips.
I know, every time I bribe my girls into the next leg of our 16-hour drive with another bag of Goldfish crackers, that the biggest part of what I paid for, and the biggest waste, went into that packaging that we’ll just throw away at the next rest stop.
The good news is that all that shiny, crinkly, chip wrapper goodness is actually a quite viable craft material, and upcycling chip bags in craft projects is a great way to keep a little more trash out of the waste stream. Here are five projects to get you started:
If you have a favorite brand of chips, well, I’m not going to be the one to discourage you from getting your fangeek on. In fact, I’m going to encourage you by telling you to head on over to this chip bag bracelet tutorial, courtesy of Craftster member exousia.
The best part of this tutorial is the information on safely baking a full-size chip bag down to the dimensions that you see in this photo, so even if you’re not into jewelry, I’m betting that you can think of something awesome to do with a shrunken chip bag, can’t you?
[The image on this page is the property of Craftster member exousia.]
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These are great ideas but… isn’t a chip bag made of plastic with a foil lining (at best) and sometimes lined with teflon related chemicals? I would not want anyone to chew on the bag or handled it a great deal– friction, heat, etc can cause small pieces of the plastic polymers (these are called monomers) to pop off and these are the little guys that cause so many problems in the body. Plastic is such a huge problem– how to reuse or dispose of it.
Not to piss on your parade, but if you’re that concerned about the packaging…. Try buying the giant carton & portioning them into re-useable portion-size containers or maybe 2 containers (front seat & back seat). If that’s too big for a family of 4, Goldfish also come in paper packages. If your children are too “not-yet-for-good” they can’t pass a bag between them, maybe they can have a bag each & the grups can collect them at rest stops. Just saying….
Thanks for the neat ideas. Not sure about making toys for little ones, who might chew on them. First comment makes total sense.
Some of the other projects are worth trying. Thanks for the article.