5/14/2018 0 Comments Arriving at our destinationToday we managed to give out our bags. After having spent two nights sewing I was able to provide my group with 39 bags. These bags were made of canvas. There were two sizes. These being tall and wide. While most wide bags were around 7.5 inches wide and 9 inches tall while the other was 7 inches wide and 10.5 inches tall. The bag’s shape was cut out and then folded in half unto itself. Then I sewed the sides, added the small bits of Velcro inside, and then turned that inside out which successfully created out bags. We decided to give these out at the Mar Vista farmers market. When we arrived we decided to ask one of the vendors if we could give out our product. We decided to approach a man running cabbage and Brussels stand. We promptly got rejected as he turned us down by saying that he was just too busy and that we should just maybe try a smaller stand. So we then tried the stand across from that one. This one was quite smaller than the first one but also sold an assortment of greens. We explained to the man how we were seventh graders from windward who were just wondering if we could hand out our bags at the stall. Luckily this man said yes and allowed our bags to be an options to customers who were buying produce that could fit in the bag. Seeing as this stand was going well, we then decided to expand our reach. I grabbed some of the bags and asked the stand next to us if we could have our bags there as well. The vendor here was also very nice and she allowed us to hand out our bags there as well. We were steadily collecting data from having two stands When we decided that we could handle a third stand. and so I went across to the two people running the apple stand. Once again we were allowed to give away our bags. We collected data quite efficiently because of the three stands and soon enough we were all out of bags. Happy with the amount of data that we collected, we called it a day. After looking over the data I found that the average amount of plastic bags used by customers is 4. Considering this we can make a rough estimate about how many plastic bags we can save if we were to make the right changes to make this an even better product. Starting out with 50 people and assuming they used 4 plastic bags each time they went to the market this means that 200 plastic bags would be used in one trip to the market. Assuming our bags could replace at least one of these plastic bags, then in a visit to the market in which only 3 bags are plastic, only 150 plastic bags would be used. Though this seems like a small number it’s quite a lot considering it only one bag each. Seeing this on a larger scale if 1000 people use 4 plastic bags they, in total, use 4000 bags. On the other hand if they only use three, they use only 3000 bags. Seeing as this is only with one bag one could imagine how much we could cut back on plastic waste if our product was good enough to be be able to be used for a variety of fruits and veggies. Though our bag was liked well enough, there were several areas were we and several customers saw room for improvement. One of the most common pieces of feedback that we received was that it should be bigger. Many told us that it was a bit too small to fit most fruits and veggies. Another thing that many customers recommended was applying some sort of adhesive to the velcro so that it would stick better on the cloth. Something else that came up often was the want for a handle or something of that degree. We found this funny considering it hand been in our original design and had been something we fully intended to do but the idea ultimately became scrapped. All in all this day turned out quite well and I thought it was a very cool experience and think that this idea really could help reduce plastic waste. It was really cool to be able to get out there and interact with other people and be able to talk and get feedback on our product. I found it really cool to find out how big of an impact our product could make with the right changes.
-Posted by Kaylee
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