ATHENS, Ohio — Each month, Athens community members gather to help their neighbors reduce, reuse and recycle — and adapt to the city’s single-use plastic bag ban.
Since December 2023, the Athens Public Library has hosted monthly Morsbags pod meet-ups, said Erin Hogan, an associate librarian at the Athens Public Library. Volunteers have produced nearly 100 bags in the past four months.
“We knew about the Athens city ban on the single-use plastic bags,” Hogan said. “We thought that it would be a really exciting way we could help support that effort. We have a group meet here to teach people how to sew them themselves.”
Morsbags is “an international movement to basically meet up sociably to sew as many reusable bags as possible to give away for free,” Hogan explained. “They encourage you to give them away anywhere you’re able to, like in the grocery line, in people’s mailboxes if you want to. They call it ‘sociable, guerilla-bagging.’”
Around a dozen people regularly come to the Morsbags pod meet-ups to socialize and sew together, she said.
“Lots of people already do know how to sew, but it seems like since COVID, they may not have reclaimed social outlets of any sort,” Hogan said. “So they’re really excited to get together and just have a time to talk to other people and hang out and and then they’re making something for a good cause. I think that’s really exciting to them.”
From master seamstresses to sewing beginners, anyone interested in sewing and reusing materials is welcome, Hogan said.
“I have folks who have never run a sewing machine or sewn anything come in,” Hogan said. “We can totally teach them — and they get to leave feeling empowered. They have a new skill, and they can use it beyond just sewing bags.”
The library provides all materials as well as instruction, Hogan said. Morsbags encourages reusing and repurposing materials, “making bags out of whatever you have,” she added.
“Typically, we like to use a lot of quilting cotton — it’s really lightweight and nice and pretty strong and easy to sew,” Hogan said. Additionally, the UpCycle Ohio Community Makerspace has a partnership with the library to provide secondhand scrap fabric.
“They are free and they’re all upcycled, so I’m excited about that — we don’t even have to go buy fabric,” Hogan said, adding, “We would definitely take donations if people have extra fabric.”
Finished bags are given away at the library’s circulation desk, she said.
“We’ve given them out with books and people are getting really excited about them,” Hogan said. “And it is really fun to be able to offer that as an option — when people bring them back and fill them up with books.”
Morsbags pod meet-ups are the first Tuesday of each month from 6–7 p.m. at the Athens Public Library. For more information, contact Hogan at ehogan@myacpl.org or (740) 592-4272. The next meet-up will be April 2.
“We love to have more people join and they can always bring their own sewing equipment, cutting equipment,” Hogan said. “[We’re] just trying to create community here and give people a new social occasion that has a good purpose behind it.”
