Lisa Walser sewing a t-shirt bag
By: Jeff Mogavero
What do you do when you find yourself faced with hundreds of t-shirts that no one wants? After years of events our storage unit was overflowing with unclaimed race t-shirts. Our first thought was to donate the shirts, but no organizations in town needed shirts this year. With a growing mountain of shirts, we decided to get creative by whipping out the scissors and sewing machine. In turn, we addressed more problems than just an overabundance of t-shirts.
For years we’ve been working through a surplus of giant plastic bags, eagerly awaiting the day they would run out and we could come up with a more environmentally friendly solution. If you’ve been in the store recently, you may have noticed that we no longer give out plastic bags. And if you’ve been in our storage unit recently, you may have also noticed that all of our extra t-shirts are gone. In the past few months, we’ve been cutting and sewing old race t-shirts to turn them into reusable bags! We are so excited about this opportunity to reduce waste and provide a useful product to customers who forget their reusable bags.
While we’re incredibly happy to be reducing the amount of plastic waste our store contributes to the world, we want to remind everyone that using our new bags is not the solution. The t-shirt bags are available to those who need them, but ideally customers will opt to not use a bag, or simply bring their own bag. Our goal is to reduce waste, not create another form of waste!
Speaking of waste, you might be wondering what happens to all of the scrap fabric from our bags. Our sewer extraordinaire, Lisa Walser, came up with a brilliant solution: dog beds! Once she has enough scraps, Lisa stuffs them all in a shirt and sews it shut, making a comfy dog bed to be donated to the Humane Society.
The best part of our new bags? If you’re in a pinch and need a sleeveless shirt, just cut off the bottom of your bag and BOOM, you have a tank top!
Drop by the store to check out the new bags, but please bring your own! We have the t-shirt bags as backups, but a limited supply that we hope will last a very long time!
A very happy Dominic enjoying a t-shirt doggy bed
