Making Mats For Homeless Out Of Plastic Bags

This is a demo video showing you how to take plastic shopping bags and converting them into sleeping mats for the less fortunate.

Making mats for homeless out of plastic bags.

I am going to try this. Opting to use green canvas bags for your grocery shopping is an effective option but many people still have excess plastic bags lying about the place. A word of forewarning when putting out the call to action for collecting plastic bags be prepared for an avalanche of plastic bags. So when i considered making mats for the homeless out of plastic bags and saw that crocheting was the method most widely used to achieve that goal here in america that is where i started.

Using a quilting ruler or other straight edge that is wider than the bags first trim the bottom seam off the bags then cut strips approximately 1 2 inch 1 cm wide across the width of the stacked bags forming loops. How these women crochet sleeping mats for homeless people out of plastic bags why we wrote this usually plastic bags are solely utilitarian and more and more they re maligned. This is a great way to involve your local church group knitting or crochet group youth group or scout organization with collecting and sorting the bags. So far they have spent at least 100 hours on the project producing 18 mats that have been handed out to the homeless and there are many more to come.

Each mat takes about 50 hours to make. Gather the plastic bags. John the apostle catholic church to create their own mats using about 700 plastic bags apiece. Meanwhile in norwalk iowa the mighty mat makers meet once a week at st.

It also makes a great addition to any camping trip. The bag ladies as they call themselves also specialize in making large tote bags out of the plastic. I read an article where people are making rectangular mats out of plastic bags as well to be used by the homeless for sleep mats during the wet season. The mats are lightweight waterproof and help keep plastic bags out of oceans and landfills.

The may 2016 auxiliary magazine featured a follow up to its cucumel s compassionate carpets article it published a few months. Each 6 foot by 2 foot mat is made from 600 to 700 recycled plastic grocery bags. Rather than throwing them out you can reuse them by crocheting them into multi purpose mats known as plarn plastic yarn. Flatten out bags tucking in pleats 2 carefully stack 6 bags use clothes pins to keep them aligned until ready to cut.

After a month of crocheting interspersed with stopping to cut bags into thin strips. I am amazed by the creativity of people. In particular plarn can be used as sleeping mats for people.