Ways to Reuse Plastic Bags
What Can You Do with Those Plastic Bags You Get Stuck with?
Each year in the United States billions of disposable plastic bags are used, so despite your best efforts to use reusable bags, you’re likely to end up with a few plastic bags. While recycling is ultimately the responsible way to deal with these single use plastic bags, you can find some alternate uses for them until it’s time to take them to the recycling center. There is value in upcycling your plastic bags if you find yourself stuck with some so read on to learn more.
Ways to Reuse Plastic Bags
- Keep Extra Plastic Bags in the Glove Compartment of Your Car. Use these extra plastic bags to collect trash and keep your car interior clean. When the bag is full or when you’ve reached your destination, empty the plastic bag into a trash can and re-use the bag again or recycle it if it has no more use left in it.
- Use Plastic Bags to Wrap Shoes When Packing. If you are traveling place any shoes you pack in an old plastic bag before packing in your suitcase. This will keep your clothes clean from any dirt or whatever may be on the bottom of your shoes. You can use the bags again to pack your shoes for the return trip and toss your dirty laundry in the bags as well to keep things separate from clean items.
- Get Crafty. Collect discarded plastic bags and use them to make plarn – or rather, plastic bag yarn. In turn you can use plarn to make more durable reusable bags, shoes, rugs and really anything else you can think up. Here are some instructions to get you started making plarn.
- Protect Items During Shipping with Disposable Plastic Bags. If you need to ship something ball up old plastic bags to use as packing material instead of purchasing bubble wrap or foam peanuts. This also works well if you’re moving or even if you just need to put breakable items in storage.
- Donate Your Extra Plastic Bags. A lot of organizations from libraries, to daycare centers to food banks accept disposable plastic bags, so check around to see who accepts single-use plastic bags and include them when you make a donation.
Did We Miss Anything?
For more ideas on what to do with those plastic bags you get stuck with, especially ideas in the crafty, do-it-yourself theme, head to this Pinterest board. There are plenty of uses you can find for extra disposable plastic bags, but we tried to find uses that would still allow the bags to be recycled. Single-use plastic bags can make cleanup of messy projects very easy, but recycling may not be an option after the fact, so take care to find environmentally responsible ways to repurpose your disposable plastic bags. How do you reuse your plastic bags? Leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments!
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