Guests at the Vancouver Holiday Market picked up 150 hand-sewn, reusable fabric gift bags Sunday, part of an effort to reduce holiday-generated garbage and, perhaps for some, reduce the stress of wrapping all those gifts.
Volunteers at sewing machines took scrap fabrics from market guests and the ReTails Thrift Store and made them into simple gift bags.
Terra Heilman, coordinator for Repair Clark County, which put on the event, said she’s been making reusable gift bags for her family for eight years.
“I thought, ‘Hey, we have all these people with sewing skills, and this is a cool, really good waste reduction type thing,’ ” she said, laughing. “It was a harebrained idea I threw together, honestly.”
No sewing machine? Try the library
For those who want to try making reusable gift bags but don’t have a sewing machine of their own, or the spare time and calluses for needle and thread, the Vancouver Community Library has sewing machines for community use.
Users must first take an introductory course on using the machines, and the next is scheduled for 2 p.m. Dec. 9.
Sign up or learn more at the library’s website, FVRL.org, under “events,” or call the library at 360-905-5000.
Repair Clark County is organized through local environmental education nonprofit Columbia Springs. The group holds events year-round to help people repair simple household appliances and electronics, fix clothes, sharpen knives and otherwise help extend the life of consumer products, keeping them useful and out of landfills.
The volunteers made relatively simple bags Sunday, in part for efficiency, but also, Heilman said, because organizers wanted to introduce market guests to the idea — and to thinking about the waste created during the holidays more broadly.
Americans’ waste production increases about 25 percent during the holidays, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and others. In addition, dyes, lamination and other decoration on wrapping paper can also make recycling difficult, depending on the facility. (For Vancouver residents, discarded wrapping paper still goes in the recycling bin.)
Gift bag patterns and decorations can get as elaborate as the maker wants, Heilman said, and can use all kinds of fabric.
“Somebody brought in a shirt today, like a button-down shirt, and so we cut the back out and we made a bag out of that,” she said. “We cut the sleeves off and made kinda funny-shaped bags out of that.”
Heilman said she’s moved so far toward using the gift bags she’s been looking for ways to unload her stockpiled wrapping paper.
“This is so easy and simple and quick that I mostly do this now,” she said.
