Upcycled salt bag to bin liner

Yesterday, while avoiding cleaning and sorting our spare room, I upcycled my last pool salt bag into a new bin liner for our kitchen bin.

Salt Bags Upcycling 

A few weeks ago, I made a couple of tote bags from these sturdy pool salt bags, and have found them very useful in the back of the car to put in dirty shoes and clothes after muddy runs and trips!  They're great as they can just be hosed out, dried, folded up and popped back in the car to be used on the next muddy day!

But back to yesterday's upcycle.

Towards zero waste

We've been trying lately to reduce our waste and recycle as much as we can. In trying to stop putting plastic bags in landfill, I decided that we shouldn't use a plastic bin liner for our kitchen bin.  So long as we don't put any wet or sticky waste in there, then that shouldn't be a problem.

We're composting all our food scraps now and I'm being extra careful checking use-by dates on food and using left-overs in other meals.

However, now and again something sticky does find its way into the bin.  I could of course just wash the bin out once I've emptied it into the large bin outside, but not everyone in the house was happy with that.

So - I decided to make a washable bin liner!

Here's how

First of all I boxed out the corners of the pool salt bag to give it a base about the same size as the bin.

Then trimmed the top off the bag so it was the same height as the bin.

Next it was time to make use of some mystery objects sent to me by the fabulous Mich in LA

What are they? Well they're packing clips for skis of course! Mich took on a whole load of them to upcycle .

I was lucky enough to get a couple of these 'doohickies' to play with, and this seemed the perfect opportunity!

I made some thin straps with the pieces of the bag I'd cut off. Then wrapped them around the edges of these plastic things and hand-stitched them to secure.

Then I just had to attach them to my main bag like regular handles...

And there you have a nice sturdy, washable bin liner - with good sized chunky handles for lifting it in and out!

Hopefully this means that our household can stop sending plastic bags to landfill!

Have you ever tried to go zero waste?  We've got it down to one 'bag' of waste a week now - having found so many things we can recycle that we didn't know, and also compost too!

Would love to hear your thoughts on this..

Jill