From trash to treasure to successful business: How to upcycle your unwanted plastic bags
My basement is littered with unwanted, uninvited plastic bags. Sure, I try to be environmentally responsible and bring reusable totes on my shopping trips as often as I can, but there are always exceptions. The weekend takeout order. The impulse purchase. In my house, plastic bags are like an infestation you can never get rid of, no matter how hard you try. But as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, melt them down into a pliable, marbleized mass that can be cast into useful products. In this collection of videos, YouTubers demonstrate how to transform unwanted plastic bags into beautiful, useful products.
About the Author
Alexis GajewskiAlexis Gajewski
Senior Content Strategist
Alexis Gajewski is a manufacturing writer and editor with nearly 20 years of experience covering the people, practices, and technologies that keep industrial facilities running. For more than a decade, she served as Senior Content Strategist for Plant Services, creating content for plant managers, engineers, and maintenance professionals on a variety of industrial topics.
During her tenure, Alexis worked to develop the brand’s digital strategy and helped launch and produce Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast. She also created The Lighter Side of Manufacturing, a weekly blog that explored the inventive and sometimes humorous side of the industry.
Alexis co-founded Influential Women in Manufacturing, a recognition program that honored 49 women in its first two years, earned an industry award for Best Product Launch, and received a proclamation from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and a commendation from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.
She also led newsroom operations and development at a large media company where she set editorial standards, developed training curriculum, and helped support AI adoption for more than 150 editors across 80+ brands spanning manufacturing, industrial processing, automation, and more.
Additionally, Alexis works as a freelance writer and editor, and her areas of interest include continuous improvement, the skilled workforce, and the role of emerging technology on the plant floor.
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