Morsbags is a global army of quiet guerrilla baggers, making free, handmade bags from unwanted fabric — so fewer plastic bags end up choking our oceans.
It started with a seabird
Back in 2007, Claire Morsman kept watching plastic bags drift past her houseboat on a London canal. She knew what they did to turtles, whales and seabirds — and then she found one, tangled in plastic and close to death. She decided she had to do something.
She’d just inherited an old sewing machine, so she taught herself to sew and made her very first morsbag from recycled fabric. Her mum designed a simple pattern that anyone could follow, her fiancé built a website overnight, and she invited the whole world to join in. The world said yes.
Sociable. Guerrilla. Bagging.
The idea is gloriously simple: make a bag from fabric that would otherwise be binned, and give it away for free. No money ever changes hands — not-for-profit really means not-for-profit here. Every handmade bag quietly replaces countless single-use plastic ones, and every one starts a friendly conversation about the waste we just don’t need.
People make them alone, with friends, at school, or in the village hall — wherever, with whoever. There’s only one rule: sew a morsbags label on, so whoever receives it can find their way here and make more. And so the word spreads, the cycle continues, and the turtles don’t have to eat bags for breakfast.
So what’s a pod?
A pod is a local or online group who sew morsbags together — a few friends round a kitchen table, a craft circle in a community centre, a whole school, or a global online crew. It’s the sociable half of sociable guerrilla bagging: good company, good chat, and a happy stack of bags for the world at the end of it.
Recognised — but never for profit
In 2024, Morsbags received the King’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest honour a UK volunteer group can be given, alongside a Global Good Award. Lovely as that is, nothing changes: the bags are still free, still handmade, still given away with a bit of love and a lot of leftover fabric.