More problems with plastic bags

I'm sorry and saddened to be writing this post today. About a month ago a group of 7 sperm whales stranded on the shores of Foggia, Italy where they died. After being examined by the scientists there, it was determined that all 7 died from ingesting plastic bags. Here's a link to the article from United Press International UPI

Sperm whales are majestic creatures.  They normally grow to 50-60 feet and weigh in at 40-50 tons! But sadly plastic bags do not make size discriminations.  Plastic bags floating in the ocean are mistaken for food by many sea creatures.  They can resemble squid and jellyfish and they are consumed by wildlife.  Once consumed they can become entangled in the digestive tract of the animal and the animal dies as was the case with this group of sperm whales.

Here's a short video from the National Geographic chanel on YouTube

People we've got to realize that our oceans are not dumping grounds!  We need to become more aware of these plastic bags and where they are winding up.  I've read estimates that 80% of the plastic debris in our oceans has washed out from land through storm drains, creeks, streams and rivers.   They seem harmless enough lying about on land, but once these plastic bags make their way into our oceans, they become the right hand of death!

I fully support ideas like plastic bag bans and taxes to help us all reduce our use of plastic bags and help prevent further tragedies from taking place like these poor sperm whales.  The beautiful diversity of wildlife on our planet should not suffer for our convenience!

Plastic is not fantastic!

Ban the Bag!

Bring your own bag!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Respect the Earth!

Planet Savers, the next generation.

I was so thrilled this summer when my neice Samantha took an interest in making her own recycled bags.  She has several that I've made for her, in fact some of the cutest ones went home with her.  Even still she wanted to learn to make her own. 

Recycling runs in the family.  Here's Sammi learning

to make her own FatBottomBag recycled bag.

We spent an evening together sorting and cutting plastic bags into strips.  I explained how to hold her crochet hook and get her bag started. As she worked on her first bag, she told me how she recycles at home.  She even goes as far as cleaning up recyclables she finds in her neighborhood.  A budding environmentalist!

Another young person who is taking up the torch for the environment is my facebook friends son.  Kori purchased a bag from me a while back and she sent me my biggest compliment.  Her young grade school son Tyler wanted to let me know he was proud of me for helping the planet.   I was so touched with the compliment I actually cried!

This week my friend Mattie sent a photo of the bag her daughter Sarena made.  They have a FatBottomBag of their own and a Minibag from the recycle exchange and Sarena used those to come up with her own beautiful design for another recycled bag that she made for her mom.

Sarena's recycled bag!  Great design awesome work!

I'm loving making these bags and helping the environment.  I love that others are being influenced to do the same and make their own efforts to help.  I'm thrilled to have made a small difference in the lives of these young people and I'm proud of the efforts that they are making.

If you want to try your hand at making a recycled/reusable bag, check out my video tutorial and I'll show you how.

Planet Savers, We're doing it!

My kitchen table.  Here's where it all happens.  You can see boxes full

of plastic bags I've cut up to turn into new reusable FatBottomBags!

We're doing it!  We're saving the planet 1 bag at a time.  You, me and FatBottomBags are making a dent in the landfills and a differnce for the future.  We're keeping them off our beaches and roadsides and out of our oceans where they could have become part of the North Pacific Garbage Gyre

This morning, as I finished updating the online store with new bags for sale, I decided to do the math and was overjoyed to realize the we've kept over 4500 plastic bags out of the landfills! 

It couldn't have happened without you.  I'm so thankful for all of your moral support from fans who are following the progress online, for customers who've purchased bags, for contributors who donate bags (over 22 families now!), for friends who spread the word, and for exchange participants who've sent me colored bags.  You are the best!  You are the reason this little kitchen recycling program has been able to help save the planet 1 bag at a time.

Thanks you!

~Christi~

Bag Lady!

Today is a bag recycle day for me!  I sold the last few bags from my inventory yesterday.  (thanks Mom!) So today there's no more procrastinating or finding some other chore to take priority.  Nope, today is the day for cutting bags.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!  This bag of grocery sacks

is destined to become the next series of  FatBottomBags!

I've received a lot of donations recently and my bag closet is getting pretty full.  When I work on cutting bags for plarn, I like to work with a lot of bags so this is great!  I usually sit for a few hours and fold and cut them, sorting them into boxes by color.

Here's a couple of the boxes I've cut up this morning.  I see some

beautiful tan and white FatBottomBags in our future!

With my moring coffee close by and the TV tuned to the morning news I started cutting away.  Within a couple of hours I'd worked through about 1/2 of the closet where I store my donated bags.   That turned out to be around 500 plastic bags ready to be changed from ocean harming disposables into eco-friendly reusables!

I'm off now to start on the stitching.  I'm really excited to start a new series of reusable bags and I hope to have some new ones posted in the store for you tomorrow.

 Did you know that each FatBottomBag uses 100% post consumer recycled plastic shopping bags?  I'm fortunate to be able to recycle for over 20 families now!  I've connected to contributors through my local community, friends, family and even through the internet.  Today I worked through a stack of bags sent to me for the Free Minibag Recycling Exchange that I'm sponsering through FatBottomBags.com.  

Bag ban, tax or recycling?

Original posting:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The city of Seattle recently took on the issue of plastic bags. A proposed 20 cent bag fee went to the voters. Unfortunately, but not suprisingly, this failed. The problem I think is that in the state of Washington our taxes are so high already. In this economy, people just couldn't imagine paying another fee, which was interpreted by many as another tax.

Now I don't live in Seattle, but I do support legislation that would help eliminate and reduce the ever growing problem of plastic bags. Many cities across the country and around the world are bringing these types of legislation to the table. In Edmonds, a waterfront city here in Washington State, a bag ban was passed and is going into effect in the next year. In New Dehli, India, a bag ban is in effect and in Ireland, there is a plasti-tax on bags which reduced their consumption of plastic bags by 90%.

I've had a lot of questions lately as to how I can support any of these types of legislation when my business is recycling plastic bags. The answer is simple really. The reason I started FatBottomBags is to reduce plastic bag use and plastic bags in our landfills and more importantly in our oceans. FatBottomBags is my recycling project and reducing plastic bags is my number one reason for making FatBottomBags from plastic bags.

I hope that someday plastic shopping bags will be banned in my area and when there are no longer plastic bags to be made into FatBottomBags I will gladly work in a different media!

I am supporting The world's first Plastic Bag Free Day will be on the 12th September 2009. Please join me on this day and make a statement about your commitment to bettering your environment. 24 hours + 0 plastic bags = doing a small thing to change the big picture!

I've printed up posters for my local bulliten board and you can do the same. Let's spread the word about reducing our use of plastic bags! For poster go to: http://www.adoptabeach.org.uk/downloads/aab/PBFD_Poster.pdf