From the outset of this project, we knew that the idea of shopping bags you BORROW, and then BRING BACK, would take some getting used to.

All other bag libraries we've followed have had the same experience: bags are borrowed.. being brought back, less so!

(Perhaps especially with the sudden increase in 'reusable' bags being given away in a rush by companies to quickly replace their 'single use' plastic bags with (slightly) more durable alternatives, to appear to be doing the responsible thing.)

We're supper happy people love our bags, and want to keep reusing them! But the downside is that it's difficult to keep pace replacing them, so people can still access a good quality bag at times when they need them.

Due to the costs involved in making the bags (even with free materials and volunteers sewing them), and the time it takes to make them for our small pool of dedicated volunteers, we need to look at how we can continue the project in a sustainable way, to avoid burning out financially, or personally.

I've always believed that for every problem, there is a creative solution! So this is not a doom and gloom 'we cannot keep doing this' story. This is a 'pivot in direction' story.

Our Bought To Support bags are continuing to get great support from our stockists, and from people who visit the studio. The bags that we sell directly, mean that we can use the extra margin which usually goes to the stockist to help offset their costs, to offset the cost of making the Borrow and Bring Back bags... in short:

This means we can continue to make bags which will be shared with the community, to help local organisations offer a free, quality reusable bag to their customers, where they have no other bag available.

To help keep up with demand, we will suggest to groups that they collect other reusable bags, such as the give-away ones, to add to the bag library stand. This will hopefully help to give the surplus bags lurking in draws, under chairs, and in cupboards their fair share of time in the sun shine, and avoid them being buried before their time.

This is beginning to happen at the bag library at Otago Farmers Market, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

We will be participating in the Autumn Harvest Festival at the Farmers Market, on the 11th May, and promoting the idea of 'buy one, donate one' - as well as giving a discount to people who trade in their 'borrow and bring back' bags for a 'bought to support bag they can keep forever with a clear conscious :)

I'm looking forward to 'releasing into the wild' some of our bags made by our busy volunteers, and meeting market goers to share the ideas behind the bag library; of shared community resources, local solutions and using practical skills to care for one another.

We love Taste Nature, and their passion for ensuring the ongoing availability and high quality of organic food in the Otago region.

The store, and cafe, have recently been revitalized by new owners, Clinton Chambers and Tracey Loughran, with a more spacious layout and even greater range of products available for you to enjoy onsite, or at home.

Taste Nature were one of our earliest supporters, generously providing part of the prize in our logo competition back in early 2017.

The ideal spot for taking a break during the day, stocking up on essentials, and even running small group events. Taste Nature also do deliveries in the electric delivery van, so you can get local fare to your door guilt free :).

Bags For Good bags are available here for just $15. You'll be helping this amazing local business, and us, to continue the good work.

The Valley Project, in North East Valley Dunedin, have been great supporters of Bags For Good since we started in 2017. They have provided their rooms for our sewing bees, collected fabric and even sewing machines on our behalf, and now have joined the growing number of outlets where our Bought To Support bags can be purchased.

Our wonderful volunteer-made bags are available to buy from reception between 10am-2pm Monday to Friday.

Also available will be our pre-cut bag packs, for those who wish to sew their own bags with all the hard work of finding fabric, working out the size and pattern, and cutting it out. The instructions which come with the packs are easy to follow and give some great sewing tips that can come in handy in a variety of situations. 

Money raised from the Bought To Support bags will be used to start a bag library at The Valley Project; enabling Kai Share and other wonderful groups who use the space to use the bags when needed, adding another element to the community sharing that is such a wonderful part of the Valley Project.

In May this year, Countdown announced they would be removing the traditional 'single use' plastic bags from their supermarkets - excellent news!

They pointed out that they would encourage customers to bring their own bags: “Our first preference is that customers bring their own bag, box, bucket, wheelbarrow - we don’t mind." Kiri Hannifin from countdown's media release

They also announced their program for supplying 'back up' bags to customers for a nominal charge, just in case customers forget their bags...

These polypropylene (i.e. plastic) bags are familiar to us, as are their propensities to rip, hole, pill if washed, and be awkward to store (due to being almost impossible to keep folded). To counter these deficiencies, Countdown announced that not only are they cheap (either you're paying more for your grocery items to make up the cost, or whoever is making them is not getting a living wage -where ever they live... probably both), but they will also, at no further cost to the customer, replace them whenever they start to wear out, in perpetuity (while groceries continues to get more expensive). The worn out bags can then go into soft recycling (to be shipped overseas...or just stored somewhere because there is no demand for recycled soft plastic - further info).

Countdown say this is 'good for the environment' (reducing the overall number of bags used, and being less likely to blow away into waterways and be eaten etc), and 'good for the customer' (no more than the cost of a packet of biscuits or bottle of fizz).

All this is less excellent news... especially as they chose the same name we had a year earlier (or a very slight variation of it).

We have a registered trade mark for our name, but due to technicalities, so do they. We have had pleasant enough conversations, and there will be no moves to stop us from continuing our work as "Bags For Good"... and there is nothing we can do to prevent them from continuing to use "Bag for Good".

The question is, do we want to continue working as "Bags For Good"? By now far more people associate "Bag/Bags for Good" with the cheap black polypropylene Countdown bags... and not our high quality, durable, colourful, upcycled textile bags made with care and good will by volunteers in our community.

Here's where we need your input!

Please take a few seconds to fill in this quick survey:

You can also post a comment, or contact us at bagsforgood@gmail.com

About this time last year we reached 200 bags, in the first 9 months of the project (and that with the previous, more complex bag design).

Now we’re rapidly approaching 500 finished bags of the new style (just 18 to complete)! We have made 417 ‘Borrow and Bring Back’ bags, and 65 ‘Bought to Support’ bags, with the remaining needed to reach the goal well on their way.

This has saved over 80kgs of textiles from landfill! (Each bag weighs between 80-200grams, an average of 160 grams).

For extra science bonus points, this saves over 100kgs of methane; for Waste Management estimates that textiles contribute 9% of mass in Dunedin Landfill, but 12% of the emissions).

As 500 is the number of single-use-plastic bags estimated as used by each shopper in year, replacing these with out high quality, durable, reusable bags is a very significant impact on our local environment!

As each bag take 2-3 hours from start to finish.  That’s 1,500 hours of volunteer work this year!

Each person who has so generously given their time and skill also contributes their warm fuzzies, and I cannot express how much that means to me, and to everyone who enjoys using these bags.

We will be holding an end-of-year celebration on Thursday 20th December, between 1-3pm (just after our last sewing bee), at Morning Magpie Cafe, please pencil it into your calendar. I'll send out invitations soon!


The next thing to do is to start planning how we celebrate reaching 1000!

If you’ve seen our previous newsletters, you’ll know that Blacks Road Green Grocer in North Road, North East Valley have been wonderful supporters of the project. Since June they have hosted a community bag library; loaning bags to local customers who have forgotten their own reusable bags, and happily receiving them back again to pass on the kindness to the next person.


Christopher had so many people asking if they can buy the bags, rather than having to return them, that he has just switched from the ‘Borrow and Bring Back’ bags, to stocking the ‘Bought to Support’ bags. Customers can now purchase these bags and enjoy keeping and reusing these colourful, multi-purpose, upcycled gems for $15.00 each.


Not only are these a way of enjoying a good thing, but the money raised from the sale of these bags helps us pay for all the various costs of the project, and keep it truly sustainable.

Blacks Road Grocer also stock other fantastic re-usable items, such as keep cups, wax wraps and produce bags, and stock a wide variety of quality local produce and grocery items with hardly a piece of plastic in site! Highly recommend stopping in on your way past for a relaxing cup of tea and delicious snack, which brings back strong memories of hanging out in my grandmothers kitchen.

South Dunedin Street Festival

TOMORROW, Saturday 3rd November, from 10am-3pm, as part of our sewing bee taking place in the Armitage Centre, 190 King Edward Street (beside the old post office).

This will be a perfect opportunity if you would like to make a bag to use yourself, or gift to friends or family. We will have everything available to cut, print, press, and stitch your own bag, including hands-on help :)

If you're not sewing-inclined, you are most welcome to purchase one of our awesome bags and help us keep the project going into 2019!

Either way, hope to see you there as part of this exciting event.

If you’ve popped into the Otago Farmers Market recently, you may have spotted a new addition. They have a brand new market kitchen and site office!


Beside all this bright shiny goodness, you’ll see the market cup library, to help the on-site vendors reduce the phenomenal number of disposable cups they give out each market, and our awesome bag library!

One-month on from the launch of the library, the bags are going (and coming back) well! We’ve had fantastic response from stall holders, who now don’t have to struggle to independently source shopping bags that match their ethos, or miss out when people come to them late in their shop with already-full bags.

Shoppers too love the practicality of our bags, with the size, strap length and strength being ‘just right’. Plus, they don't need to add to their already sizable stash of bags, they can use them when they need them and bring them back!
  
If you find yourself needing one, please take photos of your bags adventures and share them on our facebook or instagram pages!

About a month ago I received a call from one of the staff at Alsco linen service, asking if could possibly help them avoid throwing 400 bedspreads into a skip.


Hospital staff, patients and visitors at Dunedin hospital in the mid 1990’s - 2000’s may remember these pastel abstract geometric design bedspreads. They were replaced some years ago, and have since been sitting in a store room at the linen service, lost and forgotten. Time had come for these to be cleared, and the only option they could see was to hire a skip and add to the 9% of Dunedin landfill taken up by textiles.

Thankfully, another option was sought and the staff member took the time to contact us.

At first I was very nervous about how much space 400 bedspreads would take up while we slowly converted them into bags, not to mention how to get them to the studio in the first place (my small car might be tardis-like, but that would have pushed the limits). My parents came to the rescue, and with their trusty trailer we were able to collect and re-home the bedspreads.
 

Each bedspread, once the hems have been unpicked, neatly divides into 6 bags, and co-ordinates with a fantastic range of the coloured pockets we have, made from old sheets, remnants and off-cuts. Once we’ve made a potential 1,600 bags from them, the excitement might have dimmed a little, but we shall see!


P.S. if anyone has another use for these, please sing out, as we would love to share this resource! The sturdy twill weave cotton/polyester blend would make great oven-mitts, aprons, childrens jeans/overalls, play matts, laundry bags...endless possibilities!

Bags For Good bag library now open at the Otago Farmers Market!

Thanks to support from all our busy volunteers, and the Farmers Market, we now have a permanent bag library operating at the weekend market every Saturday.

These bags are for all market-goers who have forgotten their bag, or who have ended up purchasing extras that they cannot fit in the bags they brought with them (been there many times!). Now, rather than missing out or having to purchase an extra bag for the occasion, you can just pick one up from beside the site office, take your purchases home, and bring it back next week (along with your own bags for that week's shop!).

Feel free to post photos of using these bags to our facebook or instagram pages, or to the Farmers Market pages. You can also let the Farmers' Market know how handy you find this service to encourage them to keep the stand well stocked!

See the article in the Star