Is this Jutexpo bag promoting Sainsbury's Organic range 100% organic itself?
ANOTHER BOOK distribution day; the book trade seems to be picking up as autumn approaches. This Sainsbury's Organic jute shopping bag is our favourite at the moment. It stands up by itself instead of flopping over as you're trying to fill it, like most shopping bags. It should last years but when it's worn out it can go on the compost heap, since it's 100% natural fibre. Other supermarkets have started offering similar bags and prices are as low as 50 pence for the handy, smaller size. We've noticed quite a number of people using them.
Bag Ladies
Hebden
Bridge has become West Yorkshire's first plastic
bag-free town.
Free Co-op fairtrade cotton bags have been distributed to
residents (hey, wouldn't jute
have had less environmental impact?*). The town's Bag
Ladies group has looked into the possibility of potato starch bags
for traders but it looks as if, for the time being, corn starch bags are
a more suitable product.
'We don't want a food crop to be grown to provide us with carriers,' say the Bag Ladies.
Like jute and cotton, the potato and corn starch bags can be recycled by adding them to the compost heap. I imagine you'd have to shred them and mix them with other material.
I hope they can sort out all the practicalities and that the scheme can then be rolled out across the county.
* 'unfortunately from what we have learned,' Mandi, one of the Bag Ladies tells me, 'not all jute bags are good news - we have heard of serious situations of pesticide pollution in the regions growing it to satisfy western demands.. I sincerely hope your bag is completely innocent of all charges.. it can seem as if every road you go down thinking you may have found an ideal solution has its problems..ho hum.. we do our best in a tricky world.'
Latest news, film clips and links highlighting the global impact of packaging on the Plastic Bag Free Hebden Bridge website.