Plastic grocery bags. “We’ve been making mats for the homeless in the area, and we make them out of plastic grocery bags,” said volunteer Diane Smalley. “There’s a group of about 20 of us.

They then crochet the “plarn” into mats. It takes 600 bags to make an 18 square foot mat. So far, this year, they have used 52,000 bags to make 88 mats. “This is not young ladies doing this.

Plastic bags are processed in balls of “Plarn,” or plastic yarn. Volunteers at the Chicopee Senior Center then crochet and knit the plarn into sturdy mats that are donated to the needy.

Sleeping Mats with a Purpose is a volunteer program that creates mats for people to sleep on who would otherwise be sleeping on the ground. It takes about 700 plastic bags and 40-50 hours to make ...

Over the past decade, they estimate that they’ve crafted 100 three foot by six moot mats. Each one takes about 35 hours to make and uses anywhere from 500 to 700 bags.

Elaine Scott and her volunteers can spend up to 80 hours working on just one six foot long mat. “It may take a thousand bags to make a mat,” Elaine told 22News, “and at least a thousand by ...