33 Being Green 2: Eco bags

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BEING GREEN 2: ECO BAGS

When I was a kid, you had to pay for a carrier bag, unless you went to a really posh shop. Supermarkets never handed out free ones. You took your own shopping bags with you. That’s all changed. Shop owners started to see the advantage of the free advertising they got by sending people out of their shops carrying their names and logos. In the developed world, where there are ways and means of recycling bags, the environmental impact is bad, but in the developing world it’s appalling. Cheap plastic carrier bags are trapped in hedges and trees, blow about on beaches and are eaten by birds, mammals and fi sh where they cause their early deaths. Now, there are two forces working together to reduce the numbers of free bags being given out: companies are looking to cut costs, and more people want to protect our environment by reducing waste and landfi ll. We’re now using shopping bags again, but this time they’ve been rebranded: it’s the era of the eco-bag. There are ecological advantages to using eco-bags because they reduce the numbers of plastic carrier bags, and there are branding advantages too.

The idea In France the hypermarket Carrefour have fabulous eco-bags, brightly coloured with strong graphics and slogans, tough, long lasting and recognisable. Customers buy them to make a statement

as well as carry their shopping, and heir durability and good design make sure that they’re used regularly.

The most sought after eco-bag in the UK was Sainsbury’s 2007 Anya Hindmarsh bag, a limited edition canvas bag printed with the slogan “I’m not a plastic bag.” It was produced with social enterprise We Are What We Do. Unfortunately, it was a limited edition. As it was featured in style magazines, it became a sought after item which was then sold on eBay for up to 40 times its original cost. With the news coverage this generated, people looked a little more closely into the story and found that the bag had been manufactured in China and shipped to the UK. Eco-warriors declared that it ought to have been made locally to minimise its carbon footprint. Others argued that one green step is better than none. It certainly attracted a lot of attention, and the bag became the “must have” fashion item of the month.

Some aren’t that useful; the cheapest are cotton, fl at, with room for a couple of books and nothing more. They make a statement, but can’t be used regularly enough to claim eco status; they’re just one more thing on its way to landfi ll.

In practice • Offer to sell your customers an eco-bag instead of giving away free ones. If your’e serious about your ethics, do it right. Have yours made in organic cotton, by a fair trade cooperative. • Make it practical and durable. For example, handles should be long enough to go over the shoulder, but not so long that it trails on the ground when you carry it by hand.

•Make it attractive. Good design often costs about the same as bad design, so make it good-looking enough for your customers to want to use yours, not someone else’s eco-bag. That way your eco-bags will last, be used often, and they say good things about you and your brand.