A collaborative project against the throwaway plastic bag. Reusable bags sewn from salvaged textiles travelled by mail to people in 63 countries, who used one and passed the other on.
The average plastic shopping bag is used for just twelve minutes.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that worldwide we use 500 million to one trillion plastic shopping bags annually. Less than 1% of these are recycled. Most end up in our streets, rural areas, and waterways and make their way to the oceans, where they are ingested by animals who mistake them for food.
BAG takes a stand against the excesses of consumer culture and the glorification of high-priced luxury items such as designer bags. It proclaims that stylish, one-of-a-kind bags are accessible to anyone, regardless of income.
Beginning in summer 2008, UC Davis Design students sewed bags from salvaged textiles and campus waste.
In summer 2009, two bags went to people in 63 countries, each with a letter, a recycled-paper postcard and a sheet of facts about plastic bags and textile waste.
Each recipient used one bag for shopping and gave the second to a friend to do the same, so the project kept spreading.
Recipients mailed back their postcards with a message and a photo of themselves holding the bag.
“BAG is more than exchange of objects: it is about an exchange of energy and information, and the bags function as vehicles for this exchange.”
Thank you for coming all the way from California. At school we are making cloth bags that we can use again and again and again. We are now a plastic free zone.Anu and Tharanya, Furzedown School, London, 2009
Canada, United States
Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela
Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania
Australia, China and Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mauritius, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, Vietnam
Iran, Israel, Jordan, Oman, Turkey
For the Design Museum show, January to March 2011, Ann hung a funnel of more than a thousand plastic bags from the ceiling, 25 feet across at the top. Beside it lay a 30 kilogram lump of calcified plastic taken from the stomach of a camel in the United Arab Emirates.
The plastic bezoar from the camel was displayed in a cow’s stomach in the San Francisco exhibition.
January 18 to March 11. Opening reception and lecture, January 23.
UC Davis at the Smithsonian.
Installation and artist lecture.
