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My local food bank put out an urgent call for strong reusable bags, as they have been so busy recently supporting those in need in the community
STRONG….REUSEABLE….TICKI’ve “knocked up “ 27, which will be dropped off tomorrow.
I still had some of the patterned blackout fabric, which is super strong. And some stripe chef uniform fabric donated by my podiatrist ! Her Mum used to do contract sewing. She gave me loads of tablecloth gingham, which I made up for the food bank a few months ago.
That’s brilliant Ivybags! Did you know we have a morsbags pod associated with a food bank – in Canterbury.
On the same theme, I’ve just authorised a new pod for Swansea Community Fridge, a similar idea to a food bank but saving fresh food from landfill and run to benefit anyone in need.
I didnt know that
Have just seen the Swansea post:“We are a Community Fridge who provides reusable cloth bags to customers for their food parcels”
Brilliant
The food bank were very happy with my drop yesterday
There is a community fridge somewhere in Plymouth I believe.
fridges and food banks will be extremely busy this year I suspect.I think you’re right about food banks and community fridges being busy – even busier than before, in the foreseeable future.
Did you know that the first community fridge in the UK was set up in Frome, Somerset in 2016?
I offered our local-ish food bank morsbags to use instead of plastic bags from supermarkets but was told “No thanks” because they didn’t want the users of the food banks to feel “different” or “stigmatised” by being given different bags. 🙁
That WAS quite a few years ago – maybe they’d feel differently now as cloth bags have become more mainstream?
We do have quite a few bags that we haven’t been able to give away due to covid, so perhaps I’ll see if they would like some now.Or you could donate them to your local food bank. There is a donation point at St Agnes Spar – isnt that where you had fabric donations some time ago ?
The fabric donation point in St Agnes was at the Fruit & veg shop at the other end of the village to the Spar shop.
The food bank donation basket you mention supplies a different, independent, food bank to the one I approached – CPR food bank (Camborne Pool Redruth). It’s a bit further away than the Truro one, which is run by the Trussell Trust, the BIG sponsor / organiser of many food banks across the country.
Looking things up for my post above, I think that door may already be open. CPR Foodbank have a post on facebook thanking a sewist in Portreath for their reusable cloth bags.
There we go!! 🙂Perfect The Ivybridge bank is Trussell Trust
I’m currently donating my bags to Canterbury Food Bank and hope they are bringing some joy. If anyone is struggling with too many Bags for Life then they can be reused here as well (good to know if you still have a load of them and no idea what to do with them).
I set up Swansea Community Fridge and introduced the use of Morsbags during lockdown for packing food parcels so that we could ensure that our staff, volunteers and customers would be protected from catching Covid as far as possible and also so that the project would be plastic-free. We ask our customers to return their Morsbags every week, which we then wash and re-issue. I then set up our own Pod and am part of the group that sews the bags. Our volunteer sewists consist of customers, a school pupil (for her Duke of Edinburgh award) and a groups of quilters who offered to help us out. We get very positive feedback from customers about our Morsbags!
That’s brilliant Suzanne! Community Fridges are a great idea and even better combined with morsbags 😀
Is it complicated to set up and run?Not complicated Beattie, but a few things to consider. Ours is registered with Hubbub, who can help with a toolkit/resources for anyone thinking of setting one up. Recently there have been grants available to help you set one up, though they weren’t available when we did ours. Yes – a great combo with Morsbags, keeping food and fabric out of landfill!
Brilliant I tried to contact my local food bank but they never got back to me
I bet the bags look ace xx
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