Friends Shelter is an organization that provides a homeless shelter every night in one of the gyms at my school in New York City; this winter, I tried to help them provide an eco-friendly opportunity to their guests . Plastic bags, the main type of bag used by the homeless for their portability and water resistance, are a ubiquitous pollutant in the city.  Homeless people do not have the time nor means to worry about living sustainably, so I wondered if a concerted effort to provide the homeless with sturdy sustainable bags could help them store their valuable items safely, while also reducing plastic waste.  I reached out to the shelter and asked them if I could bring sustainable cloth bags for their guests.  

The shelter quickly responded, and were open to inspecting the bags in person.  I came in at nighttime after school and showed them to the shelter’s administrators.  They were hesitant about the sustainable bags, especially the thatched version, which they thought could prove too hefty and uncomfortable for their guests to carry and use, explaining to me that their guests usually preferred backpacks and other bags suited for rapid transportation, but they agreed to show the bags to their guests so I left the sustainable bags I had collected for the guests to check out themselves. 

I returned home nervous about the fact that the people at the shelter would not find the sustainable bags practical.  However, less than a week later the shelter administrators reached out to me to thank me, saying that the guests had loved the bags and taken them all, I was really happy. The people who ran the shelter were surprised by how easily their guests had found use for cloth and straw bags and were grateful.  Every little deed counts in trying to accomplish a global undertaking as the green transition seeks to do, and small projects such as providing sustainable bags to a shelter so the guests don’t have to solely rely on plastic bags that become pollutants are valuable.