7 Ways to Upcycle Your Stockpile of Plastic Bags

Craft & Design Energy & Sustainability Science

Whether you like them, hate them, or are fairly indifferent, plastic bags are a huge part of may people’s lives. Though they may ultimately contribute to landfills they don’t have to be “single use.” Check out these ideas for using your plastic bags more than once!

Plastic Bag Toy Parachute

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Through a series of folds and cuts, “Brainergiser” shows us in the video above how to create a toy parachute out of a plastic bag. Results can be seen shortly after the three minute mark.

Garbage Disposal

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If you’re going to use trash bags anyway, this will help you reduce that number. Shown above is a bag hanging from one of my workbenches, which itself is made of a reused wooden pallet.

Plastic Bags to Plastic Sheet

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As seen in the video above, with some work you can transform plastic bags into a plastic sheet for craft projects. You can see the project writeup here.

Flowers from Bags

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This interesting idea turns bags into plastic flowers. Although not as elegant as natural flowers, the results look quite nice and won’t require any water!

Plastic Bag Backpack

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For some reason, turning plastic bags into a backpack seems only natural. After all, they could be used as a handbag with no modification, and are meant to carry things in the first place!

[via Trend Hunter]

Plastic Bag Rope

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Although I wouldn’t recommend using it for anything safety (or equipment) critical, this video shows how to make rope from plastic bags. Impressively, the author is shown holding himself up with two strands of it just after 5:00.

Multi-Colored Bag Flowers

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For a more advanced flower made out of bags, the tutorial above will show you how to make these items with a “flower loom.” You can even use two different colored bags for a neat effect.

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Jeremy is an engineer with 10 years experience at his full-time profession, and has a BSME from Clemson University. Outside of work he’s an avid maker and experimenter, building anything that comes into his mind!

View more articles by Jeremy S Cook

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