"He just keeps going": Travis Smith creates sleeping mats made from plastic bags for unhoused Minnesotans
ST. JAMES, Minn. – In a project to help unhoused Minnesotans, a St. James man is creating sleeping mats made from cut-up plastic bags.
Travis Smith weaves the bags together into tightly woven, lightweight mats after his mother, Marge, cuts them into strips and ties them together.
Each mat is made of 900 bags, gathered from stores and friends and family all over Minnesota.
"I don't think we'll ever run out of bags," Marge Smith said.
Smith is now working on his 55th mat.
"He finished one yesterday. He starts another one today," Marge Smith said. "He doesn't break. He just keeps going."
Smith donates the mats to Catholic Charities, which then uses them in its apartment units for housing clients who don't yet have beds.
"Makes me feel good inside, because I'm doing something for somebody else," he said.
Smith is developmentally disabled, and Marge says the mats have given her son a reason to get up in the morning.
"He was lost without something to do, and this has filled the void," she said. "There's a lot of work to it, but it doesn't seem like work. We're having fun."
It takes Smith a little under a week to complete each mat. Another reason he says he's doing it is to keep all that plastic out of the oceans and landfills.
