Not every product need a bag

I counted my cotton totes bags a I have 15 of them. I receive it from different sources. I got them in Bhatbatini, saleways while shopping grocery. They came in with every online shopping done. My online meal came packed in cotton totes bags. The only thing that comes to my mind is, ” why should i worry?”, after all, its an alternative to plastic.  Isn’t it a totally environmental friendly?.

Cotton bags have become a means for brands, retailers and supermarkets to telegraph a planet- friendly mind-set or at least, to show that the companies are aware of overuse of plastic.

But how wrong i was. It turns out the wholehearted embrace of cotton totes may actually have created a new problem.

Issues with Cotton Bags

1. An organic cotton tote need to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production. ( Source: Study made in 2018 by Ministry of Environment and food of Denmark. That amount to daily use for 54 years- for just one bad
2. Cotton is extremely water intensive. (Source: Travis Wagner, an environmental science professor at the University of Maine)
3. China produces 20 percent of the world’s cotton and supplies most western fashion brands. It is also associated with forced labor, as a result of Uyghurs in XInjiang , China
4. Only 15 percent of the 30 million tons of cotton produced worldwide every year actually makes to textile depositories. (source. New York times, 26th August 2021)
5. Even when a cotton tote bag make it to a treatment plant, most dyes used to print logos on them are based on polyvinyl chloride, a plastic polymer and thus not recyclable.  (Source: Christopher Stanev, co-founder of Evrnu, a Seattle- based textile recycling firm.)
6. 10 to 15 percent of the cotton recycle firm receives is wasted to remove the Polyvinyl chloride.
7. It’s a free advertising. The idea, said Shaun Russell, the founder of Skandinavisk, a Swedish skin care brand.  A business that meets certain standards for social and environmental sustainability – is to use printed Cotton tote bags as ,” to use your customers as mobile billboards.”
8. Cotton may involve pesticides ( if it’s not organically grown).
9. Cotton’s water consumption has dried up rivers, never biodegrades and clog the oceans.
10. The number of cotton bags bought in Britain alone is 6 million in 2010 ( it was 10 million prior according to British Retail consortium).

That’s not to say cotton is worse than plastic, or that the two should be compared. While cotton takes huge water consumption for its production and dying, plastic bags use greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels, never biodegrade and clog the ocean.

All said down, its all upon us to take certain account for preventing and good use of Cotton Tote bags;

Few of the responsible usage are as follow;

Responsible Usage of cotton Bags

1. Use the same cotton Tote bags for multiple time while you go for shopping, grocery, and carrying things.
2. A normal cost of cotton bag in Bhatbatini is Rs. 35. If you carry your own bag, you will be saving Rs. 35 in each shopping spree. Stop buying single-use bags.
3. Items that don’t even need protection from dust, like hair scrunchies, organic tampons and facial cleansers, now arrive in cotton bags. Avoid taking these bags and return them.
4. Brands can swap cotton for hemp as hemp bags are more environment friendly
5.  Avoid using plastic packed products, mostly in sassy packs or small packs. They just end in garbage.

Firstly, Buffy Reid, British Knitwear label & Daughter, halted production of her cotton bags in April; she is planning to implement an on-site feature where customers can opt to receive one.

Addition to that, Aesop, Australian beauty brand, is converting the composition of its bags to a 60-40 blend of recycled and organic cotton. “It will cost us 15% more.”, said Ms. Suzanne Santos, the Chief customer officer at Aesop, but, “it reduces water by 70-80 percent.”

Moreover, The British designer Ally Capellino recently swapped cotton for hemp.

Another British designer, Anya Hindmarch who put the reusable cotton bags on the map. Her 2007 “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” tote, created with the environmental agency shift. Eventually, it encouraged shoppers to stop buying single use bags and effectively started a craze. Ms Hindmarch introduced a new version of her original tote bags, this time made from recycled water bottles.

In the end, the simplest solution may be the most obvious. “NOT EVERY PRODUCT NEEDS A BAG.”

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