Manning Valley Neighbourhood Services has joined the revolution fighting the use of single-use plastic bags.
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MVNS chairperson, Angela Pink was joined by six of her book group friends on a Saturday morning at the CWA rooms to make the bags for the neighourhood centre’s provision of food to clients in need of emergency relief.
“Kerrie McTaggart from the neighbourhood centre and I were chatting about the program War on Waste on the ABC and trying to get rid of plastic bags, because they’re really hard to recycle,” Angela said.
“Kerrie was saying they gave away a lot as part of the SecondBite program with Coles, and we give bread and sometimes veges and also sometimes produce from the community garden at the back. She said that would be one place where we could stop giving away plastic bags.
“We were just suddenly really aware of how many we gave out ourselves at the neighbourhood Ccntre and we thought we really have to start the bowl rolling.”
Angela and her friends made 30 bags in three hours, bringing their own sewing machines, overlockers and reels of cotton.
“It gave them an appreciation for people who do that for a living - all that repetitive work,” Angela said.
Them, not us, because Angela is ‘not much of a sewer’.
“I was just an enthusiastic encourager and went and got the coffee,” she said.
“We had a production line - I ironed the fabric, Kaye cut it into the right size for the bag and the handles, and then everyone else sewed them up.”
Angela reports that Kerrie hand-picked the first customer, who was thrilled to be given a homemade borrow bag. He even got to pick what colour he wanted.
“One assumes he’ll bring it back next time he needs bread. We’re expecting that some won’t but as long as they’re in circulation out there, that’s what matters,” Angela said.