Getting rid of plastic bags with Sociable Guerilla Bagging

The group aims to make cotton shopping bags in order to reduce the number of plastic carrier bags used and then thrown away. Each year, UK citizens use over 300 carrier bags each, most of which end up in landfill or as potential choking hazard for wildlife in the area.

The local groups (or pods as they are known) are part of a global network, founded in January of this year by Claire Morsman, who was becoming increasing outraged at the number of wild animals harmed by plastic bags after mistaking them for food.

On the Morsbags.com site you will find instructions on how to make a bag and a place to register your pod. Of course you can always just make some bags for yourself - but please let Morsbags know how many you have made so they can add it to their tally. So far all the pods have made 11,315 bags which should mean that 5,657,500 plastic bags are no longer needed.

But the real fun starts after you have made lots of bags. Then you can get involved in guerilla bagging. Pick a target street (the more shops the better) or a target supermarket and see how many people you can persuade to give up their plastic bags for your lovely environmentally friendly one.

As Morsbags.com states on their site "the idea is to get together with people in your local community, drink wine and make reusable cloth bags (from old duvet covers, curtains from charity shops etc) and hand them out to the unsuspecting public for free on specified dates outside different supermarkets. Meet new people, do something marvelous for the planet and beat other pods (groups) of baggers with your Morsbag tally."

Read more about the plastic bag menace and how to develop a good bag habit on my earlier blog entry.