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.


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.