This is A Sustainable Mind, Episode 17.

And it was just the most fabulous experience to be able to work with these women who have

absolutely nothing but the trash at their doorstep, literally.

And these women have been able to turn the skills that I gave them into a business.

Welcome to a Sustainable Mind podcast, where we delve into the minds behind today's most impactful

environmental campaigns, organizations, and startups, inspiring the environmental changemakers

of tomorrow. I'm your host, Marjorie Alexander.

Sarah Weiner is the founder and owner of Sarah Bella, where she upcycles plastic bags into

wearable art, including handcrafted tots and coats that grace the runways of fashion shows,

to beautiful wallets, kitchen aprons,

and other everyday accessories. Sarah is also a lifelong athlete, adventurer, and storyteller.

Welcome to the show, Sarah. Thank you. It's so lovely meeting you, and I've heard such

amazing things, not just about you, but about your bags, which I've looked up on your site and on Instagram.

So I hope that all of the listeners can actually get a chance to check your site out at sarabella.com.

I want to get a little bit of a brief introduction into who you are and the role that nature and the environment played in your life as a child.

Can you tell us about that?

Actually, I kind of had to get on my own.

I come from an East Coast Jewish family who never went camping a day in their lives, never slept in a sleeping bag, or climbed a mountain.

So somehow, I don't know where I got it, but somehow along the way, when I was probably an older teen or young adult, I developed a need to be in the outdoors.

And again, I just don't even know where that came from, but the way I got started was by signing up for a wilderness education class through Knowles,

which is the National Outdoor Leadership School, and it was for a 30-day ski experience

in the two-datch mountains of Alaska, which really was incredibly stupid because, you know, who goes to Alaska and has to

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