Environmental awareness takes center stage at the Prom - Ingenious ways to make plastic bags into fashion statements

There has been a recent string of those capitalizing on their environmental awareness and in fact turn it into a fashion statement not to be missed. With the end of the school year so close that many seniors have already in most cases 'checked out,' the focus has in turn be placed on end of the year activities: namely prom. Yet in preparing for the big dance what a growing number of kids are doing are passing up on the traditional hunt for the perfect dress and tux and instead making their own out of recycled materials. Their items of choice have ranged from duct tape and plastic bags to even one couple constructing the entire dress and matching vest for him out of colored gum wrappers. The girl making the latter in fact had been asking her friends and family to pass along their own wrappers from their wads of choice to her since the beginning of the school year!

So come prom time these eco-friendly couple will be flaunting their environmental awareness along with their corsages and for that perhaps we should elect them King and Queen in members of Captain Planet's court. Well that may not be all that official but I still think they should at least rest assured that no one else will be donning similar duds. It seems that plastic bags have become a hot topic in not only the push for their absence from stores in general but yet another ingenious girl has gained some notice in that she has been fusing them together in a certain way so that they are adept at keeping people warm and she has been copiously collecting and working to fashion them into these blankets for those in Haiti; that obviously touts not only environmental awareness but social consciousness.

Yet even if you aren't dressing up for a big dance you can take the same materials and follow suit to make them into other items. Recycling that plastic already littering the streets is a great way to show your own environmental awareness and in fact it is rather easy in a process called fusing. I've made fused plastic totes or little wallets and if you get creative you can make them rather fashionable. All you need to do for a small tote is to grab four plastic bags, flatten them as best you can, and cut along the top and bottom so that you are left with a double sided rectangle in the middle. Stack these all then on top of each other and lay down a piece of parchment paper on the very top. You then iron over the surfaces so that each area gets about a minute of heat; peel back the parchment paper and flip your stack of plastic bags onto the opposite side (you will note they are starting to stick together) and repeat the process on this side.

Once you've ironed, let the bags cool and then check that all areas are fused together and if you see any air bubbles just iron those spots out. After they are fully sealed you can take this fused plastic and use it like a piece of material; if you trim the edges even and then fold it into thirds you can then use a needle and thread to sew along two layers of the left and right opposite sides (leave the top third flap free so that it can act as the top of your tote and allow you to open and close it) and then decorate the little tote as you like. From there the possibilities are endless; you may even be moved to make a whole outfit and you can strut your environmental awareness around as a fellow member of Captain Planet's court.

Photo credit: Zoe Chan