As part of the latest eco-friendly news in the country, Green Vets Los Angeles, a charity based foundation is aiming to help local veterans get jobs and overcome their emotional and physical scars on the battlefield. The jobs appointed to these veterans are to help make reusable shopping cloth bags out of scrap materials.
The veterans wore I-shirts that screamed the slogan “Stitch or Die”, as they sat on sewing machines and worked in a Carson manufacturing plant. Green Vets Los Angeles is a nonprofit organization that is conducting this program in order to help the homeless veterans earn their livelihoods, along with putting a new brilliant product into local markets.
Jim Cragg began this initiative
Being a disabled veteran himself, Jim Cragg has been fighting for the environmental reformation in the city. He said that since the plastic industry is calling the bag ban to be a job killer, Cragg is helping make new jobs by asking veterans to help make wholesale reusable bags. It is a nice initiative as the veterans can come together and share their emotional and physical distress along with making a new product. The sewing process helps the veterans concentrate on just that and helps not think about other things.
Cragg launched the entire nonprofit program with just twenty sewing machines that he bought for about fifteen thousand dollars. He recruited about twenty patients from the Veterans Affairs’ West Los Angeles Medical Center and started making reusable bags for the rest of the society. Cragg basically wanted to give a lifeline to veterans who had hit rock bottom in their lives.
Cragg sells these wholesale reusable bags to customers
The entire program is a charity effort and the bags made by the veterans are sold to customers by Cragg’s business. Whatever proceeds are gotten from selling the bags are forwarded to the association, which in turn gives the money to the veterans as part of their daily wages. Competition for these bags made by the veterans includes China and the other companies in USA.
Even though the others sell their bags for $3, Cragg hopes that people will pay a dollar extra for the effort of these veterans. The charity effort will continue to grow and more veterans can earn their living, only if the California Legislature will approve the proposed plastic bag ban all over the state.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-green-vets-20120827,0,4550635.story
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