The History of the Bag Snagger

The story of the Bag Snagger has been well-documented in story and song. Author Ian Frazier has written pieces in the New Yorker and Mother Jones about the original idea for the Bag Snagger and has also documented in Outside magazine a trip he and Tim and Bill McClelland took to the Mississippi River after the great floods there in 1993.

There has been a good deal about the Bag Snaggers in other media, including two interviews on National Public Radio (NPR). The first was done in 1997 when correspondent Melissa Block accompanied the Bag Snaggers around Manhattan and can be heard here. A more recent interview by Melissa on NPR's "All Things Considered" took place in 2007 and can be heard here.

There has also been a hymn written to joys of bag snagging by Bill and Tim McClelland called "Collect Pond." To listen to a recording of "Collect Pond" and read more about it, please click here.

Please click here to see photos and read about Bag Snaggers and the New York Restoration Project, founded by Bette Midler, which has been a huge supporter of the Bag Snaggers and is doing incredible work in New York City helping to clean up and restore many of the city's more neglected parks and open spaces.

Below is a clip of Bag Snaggers Ian Frazier and Bill McClelland in action from a CBS "Sunday Morning" segment about plastic bags. This is a QuickTime movie. If you use a PC and don't have QuickTime, you can get it here. (If QuickTime is not your default player, double-click and save it to your desktop, right click and open with Quicktime.) If you use a Mac and have QuickTime installed, just click to watch. You can also watch the video on YouTube.