For the sake of the green

I was thinking of titling this entry 'It's in the bag' but decided after last night's entry you might be tempted to assume I already have a book deal.  I wish it was so.  Alas, it is not the case ... yet.  Tonight I intend to hold forth on a recycling project I am involved with.  (Is that a dangling participle?  Oh well, it sounds better than 'with which I am involved'.)  But I digress.  I truly believe we have become a throw away society from diapers, to styrofoam to small appliances.  All this stuff needs to go somewhere and let's face it, landfills aren't always the answer.  Recycling plants take a lot of items.  Some companies will buy back small appliances and cellular service providers will take old cellphones.  One item that is difficult to recycle is the plastic grocery bag.  They will take all manner of plastic items at our local recycling pick-up but not plastic bags.  I heard of a project which makes use of the bags by fashioning them into sleeping mats.  I kid you not!  The bags are cut into strip loops and the loops slipped together to form 'plarn'.  'plastic+yarn = plarn'.  Rolling this material into huge balls makes it easier to work with just like regular yarn.  Using a size Q crochet hook (it's huge), the bags are crocheted into sleeping mats and either sent to disaster areas or shelters.  I will not take the credit here as someone in a different community had the ladies from her church working on these mats and now the surrounding communities all have groups working on this project.  I jumped on the chance to get involved and have the ladies in two towns working on one facet or another in making these mats.  I had to learn to crochet all over again!  I tried to get some of the retired men to participate but after the first workday or two they decided it wasn't as much fun as they would like.  I think it's more likely they didn't want to have to listen to all the women.  Having completed several of these mats I have learned it is better to use just the grocery bags.  Heavier bags are too difficult to crochet and the produce bags are too flimsy and often have sticky residue.  Some may hear of this project and think it is silly or rather ditzy and a waste of time; nevertheless, the sleeping mats provide a bit of comfort for those who have very little in this life.  The mats also keep the bags out of the landfills and I'm all for that.