think knit: Bag For Life

Plastic

We use a lot of plastic - 100 million tonnes is the current world annual consumption, that's 20 times more than 50 years ago.

Nearly 3 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated in the UK, each year. Of which, it is estimated only 7% is recycled.

Plastic production requires significant amounts of fossil fuels, as a raw material and energy for the manufacturing process. It is estimated that 4% of the world's annual oil production is used for plastics production and a further 3-4% during manufacture. *

'Bag for life' bags have been popular for some time, with various retailers offering their own version. Supermarkets offer stronger plastic bags and Marks & Spencer have their own canvas monochromatic Twiggy totes.

Considering a plastic bag can take 100 years to decompose in a landfill** it makes sense to recycle and make use of current plastic bags and promote bag for life usage.

I found this Etsy tutorial 'How-To: Fuse Plastic Bags'

And decided to use up all the spare plastic bags in my student halls kitchen, to make a bag for life. I started by trying different bags and heat settings until the plastic fused well into a strong material and collected a patchwork of material.

I then worked out a size from an existing canvas bag and made a pattern from old newspaper to cut the fused plastic to.

Once sellotaped together (I used Magic Tape) in the desired patchwork I tried sewing some offcuts of badly fused plastic to get the correct tension. I found zig-zag stitching the most affective. Stitch together the patchwork panels and then the sides inside out. Use talcum powder if the sewing machine doesn't want to hold the material.