There is an article I read that has stuck with me for many years now. It was about a volunteer cleanup crew who found a packet of crisps in the Forest of Dean. And the package was 20 years old! How did they know the package was that old? The flavor of the crisp was one that hadn't been produced in over 20 years. True story - You can read about it here. And that just got me thinking; like holy cow - ecologists were not kidding when they said some things just don't biodegrade!
Now, truth be told, this article didn't launch my thoughts off the pad into creating something that would help sort out this ecological problem. I originally had an issue at home that I wanted to solve. So once again, I turned to my craftiness with yarn and needles to fix it.
My kids were all in school and I packed their lunches every day - the usual sandwich, piece of fruit, packet of chips/crisps. Something sweet in the sweetie bag (Pattern available here). But buying little individual bags of salty snacks, while super convienent, is not cost effective. So I would get a big bag and then repackage the snack into those little plastic snack bags. This, while still cheaper than buying the individual lunch size bags, is NOT eco-friendly and that did hurt my heart. I tried putting them in plastic containers, which was better since they are reusable but often times I just couldn't fit that many plastic containers in their lunch bags. Not to mention the container tops that went missing and didn't make it back...
So I decided to try and make my own reusable snack bag. And if I was going to make it, why not do it up and make it fun too? I did my best to try and create the snack bags that the kids would normally have in their lunch bags through knitting a pouch, and then lining it with a plastic covered cotton material. To toot my own horn, I don't think I did that bad of a job. You can take a look at these bags and get more information in my video here:
And other people thought they were pretty cool too. The principal of the school even stopped me in the school yard at asked about it! Talk about getting your feathers puffed up 🦚. The girls also told me that many of their classmates asked about the pouches and idicated they thought they were cool. Again, my peacock feathers came out.
But more important than that, at about the time the article about the 20 year old crisp packet came out, I was invited by their school to come and teach an after school knitting club. And I really couldn't think of a better project to try and tackle with the kids. Not only would it maybe help save their parents some money on the salty snacks they bought, but the kids could be proud that they made an item that would literally help save the planet.
Another item, that came about in a similar way, is my beer cap coasters. I remember as a child covering soda/beer caps with cloth and then my Great Aunt would sew them together in different shapes, like clusters of grapes and apples. Being that I can't really sew and prefer to crochet, I decided to resurrect this childhood activity by crocheting over the bottle caps. I used a cotton yarn to absorb water and voila! A great coaster for both hot and cold drinks. Also, I really like beer and have a lot of bottle caps 🍻
Still, over the years I wondered if the caps were actually recycleable. I saw some people throwing them in the trash and others seem to put them in the recycling. So I opted to do the latter, figuring it was the better of the two options. Still, I found it to be a bit of a pain as it seemed there were always bottle caps left at the bottom of the recycling bin. Turns out, this is what happens at the recycling plants too.
Bottle caps ARE recycleable but because of their size, often fall through the sifters in the industrial sorting machines and then end up being throw into the trash anyway. What a waste! So it made me double glad that I was saving mine and reusing them to make a new, practical, household product. But if you don't crochet, there's still hope to make sure those caps make it into the recycling. Save them up and dump them into your cans of soup or veg and then pinch the top closed. This will insure that the caps make it through the sorters and actually get recycled versus ending up in the landfill. You can find more info here.
*This blog entry is a follow on to my previous post: Crochet Solves Problems. I chose to write about these two, handmade items in a separate post because 1.) I forgot about them when I was writing the original post and 2.) they really are more eco-friendly than perhaps the other items that I have previously mentioned and deserved a spotlight 😁.
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