Invite friends, family and neighbors over for a sewing party to create produce or shopping bags to donate to a co-op or food pantry, or to give customers outside of a larger grocery store before they enter. A quick online search for, “reusable grocery bag sewing pattern”, or something similar, will yield you more than enough results to choose from.

Let this photo and story be a source of inspiration! Cindy Heath of the Beyond Plastics Affiliate, New Hampshire Network Plastics Working Group (PWG) and her fellow craftivists from the Upper Valley and Monadnock regions, Cornish Quilters, and St. Paul’s Church sewed and delivered 1,000 handmade, reusable, 100% organic cotton, mesh produce bags to the Lebanon Co-op Food Store in October 2023. Customers then had the choice of using a hand-made reusable produce bag instead of single-use plastic bags.