Get your plastic bags out!

So you now use reusable cloth bags when you go to the supermarket.

You keep a foldaway bag in your handbag and some spare bags in your car.

But what happens on the odd occasion when you are out and about and buying some last minute groceries and discover you've left your bags at home so you have to resort to suprmarket plastic bags?

Well don't beat yourself up - just make sure you reuse the bags.

Here's some suggestions:

• Stuff your bags into an old tissue box and leave it in the car so you'll always have a supply for the grocery run >> read our tip
• Make fused plastic and use it to make a >>laptop bag or a tote bag
• If you have a dog you know what to do! So please make sure you do it!
• Use the old bags to line your pedal bins or wastepaper baskets
• Give yourself a banana and mayonnaise hair treatment and intensify it by wrapping your hair in a plastic bag
• Turn your bags into yarn and >>knit yourself a bag with them

We'd love to her from you if you have any other ideas for using your spare plastic bags.

Top Tip of the Week - storing plastic bags

Following last week's Lexicon for Recycling today's top tip involves reusing (plastic bags) and downcycling (tissue boxes).

If you're like me, you want to reuse those old supermarket plastic carrier bags - and avoid acquiring new ones. Trouble is I have so often arrived at the supermarket and found I've left my cotton carrier bags at home. I still have a number of old pastic bags that I don't want to just chuck into the recycling so they are crumpled up inside another bag in my understairs cupboard and are always spilling out everywhere.

Here's a handy solution. Fold the plastic bags flat. Get an empty facial tissue box (thus saving it from the recycling) and stuff the plastic bags inside. This keeps them neat and tidy and it's very easy to pull them out one at a time.

Now I keep one tissue box bag dispenser in the car so I have it to hand when I am doing the shopping and another under the kitchen sink for when I need a plastic bag at home.

Knitting with plastic shopping bags

This little bag is knitted from plastic shopping bags - cut into strips, looped together and used as yarn. The bag is knitted on a French loom. Check out this link to see how to do it. Atomic Shrimp