DETROIT – Do you like potato chips? A group is asking for your potato chip bag when you’ve finished it.
Erada Jere Oleita and Allante Steele work with the Chip Bag Project. They’re collecting chip bags to turn them into products that can help the homeless.
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“We’re taking foil, like chip bags. So your potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, Better Made Chips, and turning them into sleeping bags and other products for the homeless,” Oleita said.
The pair said it’s their way to help those without shelter brave sleeping outside during the winter months.
“No one ever wants to be there. No one wants to be in that place. It just sometimes happens. When people are in that place, they feel like they don’t have any help or any money, or anyone in their corner. In reality, people in the community, are willing to help,” Steele said.
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They said the process of turning a bag of chips into a blanket isn’t that hard at all.
“You get the bags and then you cut them open. When you cut it open, the inside of a chip bag has a foil that mimics an emergency blanket,” Steele said.
They shared the process in a post to Instagram.
“So, basically, you take the chips, you eat the chips, cut the bag open, wash the bag. Do that at least 150 times. You put iron on that plastic. You put that over the bags, and you melt them together, and then you take a big piece of plastic, you put that over it and that’s how it insulates together. The one Tae was working on was a two-person sleeping bag, so that was about 320 chip bags. The single-person is about 150,” Oleita said.