No, your choice of shopping bag won’t end wars or stop famine in third world countries but you can certainly do your part to save the forests and stop global warming by purchasing and using a 100% recycled shopping bag.

100% Recycled? 100% Reusable?

With all of the shopping going on, you are bound to find yourself head deep in plastic bags. No matter where you go, your purchases will be bagged in some form of material that can be re-used in several different ways.

When the cashier at the grocery store asks you if you want paper or plastic, you should be able to give a better answer than, “whichever”. Plastic bags, once used and discarded, end up in landfills where it can take a minimum of one million years to break down. Even then, the chemicals used in the manufacturing of the plastic bag seep into the ground and poison it. Paper bags are a better choice but it still takes a tree to create piles of paper bags. So what can you do as a consumer to be an eco friendly shopper?

Eco friendly shopping bags are handmade from materials you throw out everyday. Those newspapers you toss into the recycling bin every week make their way back into your home in the form of a super durable, 100% reusable and recycled shopping bag. Because paper is made from trees it is much stronger than you’d think. Ever try tearing a phonebook in half? When bound and woven during the bag making process, it is given more strength and durability that will come in handy when your shopping bag is filled to the brim with cans of soup.

Other Uses for Your 100% Recycled Shopping Bag

When your bi-monthly shopping trip is over, don’t put that bag away! There are many other uses for your 100% recycled shopping bag. Your reusable shopping bag can be reused and reused and reused…

Here, to get you kick-started are just a few of the hundreds of different ways that you can reuse your eco-friendly shopping bag:

• As a diaper bag – tons of space for baby’s stuff and yours
  
• As a pet carrier – cozy and comfy for your furry friend
  
• As a crafts bag – imagine all the knitting stuff you can cram in there and bring wherever you go
  
• As a carry-all or airline carry on- it’s the perfect size for overhead bins

Being eco friendly used to be about living outdoors without the modern conveniences that pollute and destroy the Earth. Now, being eco friendly means making smarter choices about the things you buy and how you reuse them. Using shopping bags made out of recycled materials can’t give you super powers but it can definitely make you feel like a super hero saving the earth.

A large number of organisations worldwide have taken it upon themselves to ensure that marginalised producers in the developing world get a fair deal. They research into trade practices, create awareness among consumers and inspect and certify products and producers who follow fair, humane and equitable trade practices. The most significant among these organisations is Fairtrade.The definition of “fair trade” which has been accepted internationally is the one agreed to by FINE, a working group of four international Fair Trade networks:

“Fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, which seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalised producers and workers – especially in the South.”

The idea of “fair trade” is quite a few decades old, but certifying goods took off only in 1988 with the first Fairtrade label "Max Havelaar" by the Dutch development agency Solidaridad when fair trade coffee started being sold in the Netherlands. Incidentally, Max Havellar was a fictional character against exploitation of plantation workers in Dutch colonies! This was followed by similar efforts in markets of Europe and North America, including the "Fairtrade Mark" in UK and Ireland (1992) and "Transfair" in Germany, USA, Canada, Italy, Japan, etc.

In 1997, Fairtrade Labelling Organisation International (FLO) was formed in Bonn, W. Germany to unify and standardise certification across the globe. 21 labelling initiatives are members of FLO International. The FLO movement now has two distinct entities – FLO International lays down standards and provides business support to producers, while FLO-CERT looks after inspection, audit and certification of producers and traders.  In UK, the Fairtrade Foundation was formed in 1992 by CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Traidcraft and the World Development Movement. A number of other organisations soon joined in, including the National Federation of Women’s Institutes. The Fairtrade Foundation has indeed come a long way from a tentative beginning in Fairtrade labelling in 1994, when the first Fairtrade certified product, Green & Black’s Maya Gold Chocolate with cocoa from Belize was launched.

Since then, a lot of water has flowed down the Thames. The Fairtrade Foundation has been a marvellous catalyst of social change. Awareness about the brand is now at nearly 60% of the adult population in UK. The number of Fairtrade certified products from food grains to footballs have crossed the 1500 mark. Among its patrons are a diverse range of organisations, including the House of Commons, The Transport and General Worker’s Union, the BMA, Youth Hostels, Salvation Army, the Co-operative Bank, Co-op stores and supermarkets like Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Waitrose, Safeway and Asda. In 2005 itself, Fairtrade crossed the 100 towns and 1000 churches mark in the UK. Retail sales of products with the FAIRTRADE Mark were estimated at £290m in 2006.

Accolades have been pouring in, too. The Fairtrade Foundation won the King Baudouin International Prize for Development in 2003, the Charity of the Year award in 2004, and The Directory of Social Change’s ‘Social Change Award’ in the category of Influencer in 2007. Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation, was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006. The FAIRTRADE Mark also won Special Recognition as a Superbrand in 2005. 

What is more important is the fact that Fairtrade is now a movement with a great momentum, directly benefiting millions of marginalised producers across the globe. 

One of the most significant developments in the world of trade in the last couple of decades has been the opening up of economies across the world. International trade has got itself out of the fetters of tariffs (protectionist import duties) and quotas (quantitative import restrictions) to a large extent, leading to the an unprecedented boom in business globally under the WTO regime.

A direct fallout of this has been the relocation of many low-technology industries to low cost economies in the developing world. To remain competitive, a large number of companies have shifted their manufacturing base to low-cost economies of the “South.” The cost advantage in these countries has also helped consumers in the developed countries by keeping the prices of many essential commodities low. In the textile sector, most of the world production is today sourced from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

However, a completely different set of problems started surfacing soon after this transition. To keep costs low, the majority of producers looked for countries with the lowest possible wages to locate their manufacturing facilities. This in turn led to concentration of industries in countries with inadequate safety net for industrial workers – whether a poor legal structure or a poor record in their enforcement.

Horror stories soon began pouring out of many such manufacturing hubs, a return to the dimly lit, unventilated ‘sweatshops’ of the early days of the Industrial Revolution. A kind of industry where there are no maximum working hours, no overtime pay, no holidays, no benefits, no trade union or collective bargaining rights. Where little children work in the unhealthiest of environments, and getting pregnant can get a woman worker fired.  There have even been reports of indentured or bonded labour and sexual exploitation of workers. The victims are inevitably the weaker and marginalized communities without a minimum access to human rights and freedoms we take for granted.  Governments in such nations sometimes hesitate to crack down on such abominable practices fearing that the industries would simply relocate to other countries, creating even more poverty.

It is against such inequitable and unfair practices that the concept of ethical and sweatshop-free production first emerged. The movement presents a case for discouraging these unscrupulous producers by simply refusing to buy their products, unless they follow certain norms of behaviour. A number of organisations on both sides of the Atlantic have campaigned for consumers to be aware of where the things they buy are actually coming from, and whether blood and tears went into making them.


Individuals, communities and governments all over the world are today sitting up and taking notice of the menace to our environment from the plastic shopping bag. Regulation, restriction on thickness, phase-out, even complete ban on their use are either being contemplated or have actually been enforced. The question that arises is – what now? Once we resolve to do away with the plastic shopping bag, it’s time to look for alternatives.

What about the shopping bags already in existence or those which will come into circulation until they are banned altogether? The first obvious step towards reducing them must be to ensure that they are recycled as far as possible. A virtual cottage industry has developed in less privileged communities in many parts of Asia and Africa. People there have been harvesting and recycling discarded plastic shopping bags for quite some time to create aesthetically wonderful and useful household items – even shopping bags. Supporting their effort can go a long way to protect the environment, at the same time helping these communities sustain themselves.

Some eminent designers in the West have drawn inspiration from these eco-friendly alternatives and launched collections of their own.  Recycled items of both varieties are now easily available in the market.  When you buy them, you can have the satisfaction of doing your bit for a greener planet.

There are a host of alternatives to the plastic shopping bag. Paper is the most common and is recycled to a much greater degree than plastic.  But it has environmental costs as well. Production of paper itself involves deforestation. Again, though it biodegrades much more than plastic, most of the paper going into landfills along with other garbage do not break down fast enough due to the shortage of air, water and light in modern landfills.

Then there are substitutes of the plastic shopping bag, made from various natural fibres like jute, cotton, linen, hemp, and so on. Hemp is not particularly popular as the hemp plant is a source of cannabis. But bags made of jute etc. can be used a large number of times and are the ideal bag material. These fibres are composed of cellulose, a natural polymer. Not only are they biodegradable; they actually reduce the effect of carbon dioxide emissions as the plants absorb the gas, helping fight global warming. 

Using an eco-friendly bag makes sense moneywise, too. If you carry your own bag to shop, you are likely to get a discount for not taking a plastic bag from the store. The cost of a bag will soon be recovered. There are enough truly fashionable bags out there that you would want to be seen carrying. In fact, you will be making a statement when you walk into a store carrying an eco-friendly bag.

The main thing is to give up the plastic habit. It takes a little bit of effort to actually take our reusable eco-friendly bag along to the store and not to leave it in the car. Once we are able to change our mindset and make it our second nature to refuse plastic bags, the rest is easy.