Plastic Bag Tarps Provide Shelter in Haiti’s Rainy Season

Plastic bag tarps for Haiti (image by Kevin Clark/The (Eugene) Register-Guard)

Ever since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, relief supplies and donations have been pouring in.

But in May, displaced Haitians will experience a different type of pouring.

The Haiti rainy season will begin.  And thousands of people still do not have adequate shelter.

Inspired by a project in a book entitled, “Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design,” a University of Oregon material product studies student is working to upcycle ubiquitous plastic grocery bags into plastic bag tarps.  The tarps will then be sent to Haiti to help provide temporary shelter for the many homeless people that suffered losses in the Haiti Earthquake.

Even though Ruby Sprengle abhors plastic bags (“animals get caught in them and they’re just ugly”), she gathers them up in the hopes that she and supporting volunteers can create hundreds of plastic bag tarps to send to Haiti this month.

In a recent interview, 22-year old Sprengle noted:

“They don’t have enough tents for everybody.  So people are making tents out of branches and sheets and plastic bags.  They don’t have anything.  Their homes were completely destroyed.”

Sprengle is calling for volunteers in Eugene and Portland Oregon to help create the tarps during workshops this month.  A single 10-foot by 12-foot tarp requires about 400 plastic bags.  The tarps are created by ironing the bags together, as follows:

Start by taking one plastic bag, fold it a couple of times vertically, then cut off the top and bottom. That leaves a double-sided rectangular piece. Do that with two more bags and you’re ready to place all three flattened bag pieces between two pieces of tracing paper and iron. Once you have lots of pieces, you slightly overlap them and meld them together with more ironing. Sprengle then uses grommets and clear duct tape on the ends to finish the tarps.

After the plastic bag tarps are created, there is still the hurdle of transporting them to Haiti.  People headed to the country on other missions are asked to carry a few tarps with them on their journey.  Also, if the tarps can be transported to Florida, Spengle’s father is a barge captain there.  He can carry them across from Florida to Haiti.

You don’t have to live in Oregon to help with this effort!  If you have materials, time and or connections to help create or transport plastic bag tarps to Haiti, you are urged to do so.

To get specific information on out how you can help, visit Ruby Sprengle’s blog, utilityquilt.blogspot.com