Today’s word: plarn

This lovely plarn bag featured recently on the Guardian

Plarn,  or plastic yarn.

One day you’ve never heard of it, next day it’s everywhere.

Lately, I’ve become interested in crafty ways of transforming rubbish, and especially plastic rubbish, into useful things and even attractive presents.

One of the simplest tricks I’ve discovered is making plarn from  lengths of plastic carrier bags.

It is amazingly quick and easy to do, and would be perfect for kids and school projects.   I’ve posted a little ‘how to’ note here with a link to an excellent 2-minute YouTube video tutorial.

Once you’ve made your plarn (a matter of minutes only), you can knit, crochet or braid it into any number of things.

Judging by the internet, rugs and bags seem to be most popular but I’ve even seen it braided into a pair of waterproof sandals!

The gorgeous knitted clutch bag pictured above is from a recent article in the environment section of the Guardian.

I particularly like the the fact that plarn gives a new lease of life to plastic bags that might otherwise end up in landfill, where they will spend centuries slowly decaying.  ‘Plarning’ — have I just coined a new word?  — may mean we can dramatically reduce the amount of plastic rubbish that we dump.  Something that would greatly help our ‘rubbish diet‘.

I know some people think this kind of ‘recycling’ is nothing more than “slow motion landfill”. But I have to disagree: if we can transform the plastic into something useful, such as a bag or rug, it means that item is not being made anew, so we are helping to reduce the consumption of scarce resources.

Of course, it goes without saying, that we should all be trying to reduce the number of plastic bags we end up with!

(c) MaryMulvihill.net 2009