Tees 2 Totes Girl Scout Gold Award
Looking for a fun easy craft to do with your friends, family, youth groups, sports teams, students, or clubs that can save the environment? Recycle Tee Shirts into no sew tote bags.
Michelle Audino, a junior at Westfield High School and member of Girl Scout Troop 40491, completed 100 tote bags for her Girl Scout Gold Award – Tees 2 Totes – with the help of local Girl Scout Troops, community residents, and the Holy Trinity Youth Group in Westfield.
“I recycled T-shirts into tote bags to reuse old clothes instead of throwing them away, and to use as a replacement for plastic bags. The tote bags I made from the T-shirts are large and thick,” Audino said.
Audino says that recycling T-shirts into totes bags will address two environmental issues: 1) cutting down fast fashion pollution, and 2) cutting down plastic pollution in landfills and oceans.
According to Audino, the clothing industry is the second largest industrial and freshwater polluter. In addition, she noted that single-use plastic bags will be banned from stores in New Jersey effective May 2022.
On September 7th, she met with Deacon Keith Gibbons of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Westfield to donate 40 totes, which included 27 T-shirt totes and 13 bags, to the Westfield Food Pantry. The totes will be used to transport food to families in need. Attached to each tote bag is a business card designed by Audino. The card includes a QR code, which when scanned with a cell phone camera, links to a YouTube tutorial prepared by Michelle for detailed instructions on how to make your own totes.
Another way to access detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make the no sew T-shirt totes is to view the YouTube video, “Tees 2 Totes T-Shirt Tote Bag Tutorial”https://youtu.be/cx9GgrjEOG8.
Those who watch the video are asked to complete the survey linked in the biography of the video.
