Crocheted produce bags

The issue of plastic waste is really topical and important but so frustrating. On one hand you feel the politicians you’ve elected into office aren’t being hard enough on the industries that make and use so much plastic. On the other hand you realise how difficult it can be to avoid plastic in everyday life. I still think my plastic consumption is too high and the major culprit is packaging of cosmetics and food. I have made a bit of progress switching out things like shampoo and body wash for bar soaps but the majority of my cosmetics and skincare still comes in plastic.

When it comes to food I’ve noticed I’ve become much more aware of the plastic packaging since we started separating it from the mixed waste. Seeing how much waste is created over a week really makes you pay attention. One part of my food related plastic waste I’ve been meaning to eliminate for a while is the small plastic bags for fruits and vegetables. Now, most supermarkets (in Finland) have the biodegradable bags these days but I’ve heard some people say they’re not so great since they degrade so slowly and that they have to be cut open at the recycling plant ( I need to to do a bit of research into this). Then there’s the complicated issue of growing crops to make plastic when there’s food shortage.

So I crocheted a set of produce bags over a period of several months without any specific plan. I just looked up easy lace like stitches and crocheted until I had a bag I felt could fit a couple of apples. I was doing this quit absentmindedly because it wasn’t until the third one that I realised that I was using too dense stitches and doing some basic grids of trebble (double crochet) would have been faster and maybe used less yarn. I would have liked to use a linen or hemp yarn but I couldn’t find one thin enough so I used cotton crochet yarn. I later bought some cotton ribbon for closure.
I’ve been using them now for a couple of weeks in different supermarkets and It’s been going well even though I felt a bit weird about it in the beginning.

There weren’t many colour options for cotton ribbon this thin so the colour combinations are a bit random.

I made one bigger round pouch with potatoes in mind.

I really like this colour!

I keep the produce bags in this pouch I made a couple years ago

Voila!