the bluecotton blog

In recent years, as the general population has become more environmentally-conscious, many “green” habits have taken to the mainstream. One such example is the proliferation of reusable grocery bags–a simple, but effective way to reduce waste and our reliance on non-degradable plastics. Continuing our anticipation of Earth Day 2011, I’m going to show you how you can jump on the reusable bag bandwagon without having to buy any of those expensive store-branded bags sold at the store.

As detailed in my previous post, The T-Shirt Lifecycle, some t-shirts inevitably fall out of our rotation for one reason or another. There’s no need to throw such a shirt away! Why not use it to create reusable grocery bag? Oh, and did I mention there’s no sewing required for this? That’s right. In this segment from NBC’s Today Show, author Jodi Kahn shows you how to complete this project with no more than an old t-shirt, a roll of duct tape, and common office stapler.

For more ways to recycle your old t-shirts, check out our previous post Earth Day 2011: Repurpose Your T-shirts.

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Earth Day 2011 is coming up this week – April 22nd, so I’ve been thinking about ways to reuse t-shirts whose fashion services are no longer required. As posted earlier in the blog – there are ways to juice up that old boxy t-shirt into a more flattering, girly garment, but some of us (me) aren’t too crafty or should even be trusted with scissors. So I dipped over to Etsy.com to see what the more talented humans have come up with in terms of repurposing and reusing t-shirts. Here are a few cool things I found:

Recycled T-shirt Scrubbers

Rugs Made From T-shirts

T-shirt yarn being woven into a guitar strap:

Dryer Sheet Replacement Sachets:

Dog Clothing:

Hey – if you’re not the crafty-type, most these folks take custom orders – and will accept YOUR t-shirts to purpose for your very own commissioned custom item. If you can’t do it – you can certainly hire one of these good people who can.

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