One Dolores resident is doing her part to keep trash bags out of landfills.
Everyone knows that you can combat trash waste by taking reusable grocery bags into the store.
Valerie Leroy, of Dolores, has taken that idea one step further.
Leroy, a fiber artist, makes reusable bags out of plastic grocery bags - essentially killing two birds with one stone.
Leroy, who has been weaving mostly cotton fiber for 22 years, has added plastic to her repertoire.
She experimented by cutting the bags into strips and weaving them on her loom. It's a long process, but when she is finished, Leroy has transformed 16 to 20 plastic bags into a reusable shopping bag, complete with a fabric liner and handles.
The hardest part of the process is cutting one plastic bag and turning it into a continuous strip of plastic.
"It's like cutting out paper dolls," she said.
Leroy said she's been making the bags since 2007. One bag represents about five or six hours of work.
"It's one of those things you can sit in front of the TV to do," she said.
Leroy has a hard time keeping them in stock. One woman recently bought all the bags when she was selling them at the Winter Farmers Market.
And just like the plastic bags they are made out of, they seem to last.
"My sample bag is 7 years old," Leroy said.
When Leroy isn't weaving plastic bags, she creates works of art with fiber.
Leroy has considered herself a fiber artist since she was 16 years old when she started sewing.
She started weaving 22 years ago.
Her cotton dish towels are well known at the Winter Farmers Market.
"I know a couple of people who have had their dish towels for 10 years," she said.
When Leroy sits in front of her loom at her house, she pushed a series of treadles as she passes the material back and forth.
She also makes napkins, and lap throws for her company, Buffalo-Wolf Weaving. She likes to work with cotton because it absorbs well and is soft.
If you are interested in some of Leroy's weavings, call her at 882-2230.
Fast Facts
More than 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide. Consider China, a country of 1.3 billion, which consumes 3 billion plastic bags daily, according to China Trade News.
About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute.
A single plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
More than 3.5 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were discarded in 2008.
Only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the United Kingdom are recycled (BBC).
The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year.
Plastic bags are the second-most common type of ocean refuse, after cigarette butts (2008)
Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down.
Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.
