500 bags completed!

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!

Bag Monster Halloween costume from http://bite-size-green.blogspot.com/2012/10/halloween-bag-monster-costume.html

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!