19 January Mission - Day 18

This work of art was made using 2386 plastic carrier bags.

I wonder how many carrier bags each of us has stuffed in corners in our homes?

I'm pretty good at carrying a strong cotton bag when I go shopping, so I rarely take a carrier bag if it's offered. I've noticed supermarkets and the like are fine if you refuse a bag, but clothes shops and department store till workers still give you very strange looks, and ask "are you sure?" in a bewildered tone. My partner is now consistently using 'bags for life' - he likes the ones from Pets at Home - and as he does most of the shopping, our carrier bag stash is much smaller than previously!

As there's a limit to how many bags one can use as bin liners - I'm going to cull the bags down to four, so we can replace each bin bag once - lets get rid of carrier bags.

How to recycle bags

• One of the local charity shops (for the city's hospice) is happy to take used carrier bags, so that's where my stash will go.
• I'm really tempted to make shopping bags like this one or  this one. Aren't they great? I would say, if you do that, then as part of the task, make the "yarn" as part of this task today, that way the bags won't be hanging about...
• If you are into knitting rather than crochet, how about this bag or this one or even this one?
• Some supermarkets have put up recycling banks specifically for plastic bags.
  

Perhaps you can share your suggestions with the rest of us?

PS You might be tempted to keep a few bags back for the stuff you are going to be decluttering, but I don't do that. One of the charity shops gives out "life laundry" bags, clearly branded with their name and I use those, and make my partner aware, after one day, he put my carefully sorted donations in the bin, thinking they were trash...