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Scores of children and their equally enthusiastic parents flocked to the CoolMom craft station at Earth Day for Kids this past weekend, drawn by the rolls of colorful duct tape that promised new life to old Capri Sun pouches.  Thanks to CoolMom Barb Burrill’s ingenuity and instruction, a team of CoolMom volunteers was ready with hundreds of washed and dried Capri Sun bags (collected from local elementary school John Stanford International’s lunch room) and the DIY know-how for converting them into coin purses. A little duct tape. A little origami. Presto change-o! A cute and colorful pouch.

Half the fun of this event was seeing what the children did next. Many of them embraced our re-use ethic and applied their creativity and duct-tape engineering skills to creating purses, wallets, and all manner of shiny pouches. Several children spent the bulk of the afternoon applying intricate duct tape patterns to their pouches. There were lots of smiles. You can find the instructions and some finished products here.

On the floor, some CoolMoms and cool older kids created a space for crafting reusable tote bags out of coffee bean bags, duct tape, and car seat straps left over from CoolMom’s last car seat recycling drive. Magic Barb had strategically pre-sewn the straps to the bags. Using duct tape and the “box- bottom fold” we finished off the bags and sent families home with a new shopping bag so that they will be prepared when Seattle’s plastic bag ban goes into place. Environment Washington was on hand to tell people about the bag ban and why it’s important. If you don’t know, check out CoolMom Kimberly Christensen’s blog post about it here.