{"id":86,"date":"2014-12-28T10:10:04","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T10:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=86"},"modified":"2022-04-13T16:14:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:14:58","slug":"changing-the-world-one-bag-at-a-time-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2014\/12\/28\/changing-the-world-one-bag-at-a-time-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the world, one bag at a time: Claire Morsman (BA 1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a><\/figure>\n

Claire took inspiration from seeing rubbish floating past her houseboat to start a create a worldwide environmental organisation that has grown through word of mouth.<\/p>\n

“After university I lived on a houseboat and got really frustrated to\u00a0see the number of plastic bags that floated past us each day,” says Claire.\u00a0“I decided it’d be a good idea to make reusable bags from unwanted\u00a0material, and my then boyfriend, now husband, Joseph, put together\u00a0a website so we could share the pattern for making the bag \u2013 we went\u00a0from there.”<\/p>\n

And the results are astounding. To date, more than 150,000 reusable\u00a0Morsbags have been sewn around the world, with people from Prince\u00a0Charles to prisoners, mums to members of the Women’s Institute taking\u00a0part. Claire estimates that this many reusable shopping bags has helped\u00a0to take more than 80 million plastic carrier bags out of circulation, a\u00a0figure that will have a huge impact on landfill sites and litter.<\/p>\n

“Anyone and everyone can set up a pod, which is where people come\u00a0together to make the bags. Morsbags seem to have inspired people to do\u00a0something creative, simple, collaborative and meaningful. People love to make, to learn, to share and to give, it’s just mind boggling the response\u00a0we’ve had and the results we’ve had purely through word of mouth and\u00a0sewing over tea and cake!”<\/p>\n

But there’s still a lot more to be done, as in the UK alone millions of\u00a0plastic bags are still given to shoppers on a daily basis.\u00a0“We created Morsbags because we despaired at the plastic bags\u00a0floating down the canal, like so many urban jellyfish,” says Claire.<\/p>\n

“The staggering amount of plastic bags freely handed out in shops\u00a0is boggling and consequently shoppers habitually forget that plastic bags\u00a0are not the only option. I think we’re dragging our feet on this issue,\u00a0other places have banned carrier bags outright. It’s up to the consumers\u00a0to take the initiative.”<\/p>\n

Find out more at the\u00a0Morsbags website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claire took inspiration from seeing rubbish floating past her houseboat to start a create a worldwide environmental organisation that has grown through word of mouth.","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8151,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/8151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}