I’ve got a 50% off coupon for the fabric store, and I’ve decided today’s the day I’m going to use it to buy a bunch of canvas and make myself the reusable grocery bags I’ve been thinking about for months. I save all the plastic bags I bring home from the grocery store and reuse them at least once, but I know that’s still not good enough, and I would rather not bring them home in the first place.
G2BGreen.com has an excellent article about plastic and reusable bags that includes some eye-opening statistics. Statistics that make me think I need to stop putting it off and get my reusable bags made. I did not know that it could take 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose, and with the number of plastic bags most of us are using, that amounts to a massive pile of plastic bags. I wonder where that pile is? Perhaps part of the pile is in that garbage vortex in the Pacific ocean.
A lot of grocery stores have started to sell their own reusable bags, which I think is wonderful. And if I understand correctly, some of them will even credit your bill when you use those reusable bags so that they ultimately pay for themselves. I think this is wonderful. If it weren’t for the fact that I like to make my own bags, I definitely would have picked up a few reusable bags at the local grocery store by now. If you are like me, and want to make your own reusable grocery bags, here are a few excellent free patterns I found:
- Simple Cloth Grocery Bags from Jan Andrea’s Baby Crafts
- How to Make a Canvas Bag from Pie and Coffee
- Wallet Size Fold Up Reusable Shopping Bag from Whip Up
- A TOTE-ally Easy Way to Help the Earth from Instructables
- Fabric Shopping Bag from Dye-abolical Designs
- Cheap & Easy Fabric Grocery Bags from Wisdom of the Moon
With so many patterns, what are you waiting for? Go make a reusable grocery bag!
I got great big shopping totes from IKEA for .99 (not those carry-alls they sell, but others with really cool graphics) We bought six, which was far too few because we realized we could buy them as gifts. When we went back they were all gone.. boo. I love the reusable bag revolution!
I belong to the Bag Ladies Swap group on Flickr. This month we are swapping reusable shopping bags. This post links to some tutorials:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bagladies/discuss/72157603856067681/
This one shows some of the bags:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bagladies/discuss/72157603907065932/
I’d love to check out the tutorials and photos, but Flickr tells me your links are private. Anything I can do to get around that?
hmmm…do you have a Flickr account? I didn’t think about you not being able to go there…let me see what I can figure out. You can email me at lunnfran at cableone dot net.
try going here and then look through the photos and posts:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bagladies/
Looks like I have to be a member of the group to see the discussion. I just joined. 🙂
Good, I just realized the link to my blog in these comments didn’t work because of a typo, think I’ve fixed it.
I just wanted to stop by and let you know I got my wallet yesterday. It is even cuter in person than in the picture. I love it! Thank you so much for hosting a giveaway.
Hi,
This is Susan, a community member at http://www.bagsontherun.com/, a premier Green Bag community in USA. Seeing your blog, I found that you are also engaged reusable grocery bags.
Can I review your reusable grocery bags on one of our blogs?
Thank You,
Susan
webmaster @ bagsontherun.com