TRASH BAGS: Eco-Friendly (& Fair-trade) Totes
by Gretchen
Bags made out of recycled materials have been around for quite some time - but on the whole they’ve been a pretty frumpy bunch. That’s why we are so excited to discover Trash Bags - an Australian company providing eco-inspiration to show that you can make hip, recycled (and fair-trade!) handbags out of many different kinds of refuse — including plastic grocery sacks, newspapers, and telephone directories, as well as the old-time favorite: juice-containers.
Trash Bags offers a collection of fairly-traded bags and homewares made from recycled materials by artisans in disadvantaged communities. By creating fair-trade partnerships with non-profit economic and community development organizations in the Asian Pacific region, Trash Bags is able to bring a product to market that is helping to secure a better future for the craftspeople, their children, and our shared environment. Not only that, their transparent business practices include published bi-annual sustainability audits, the first of which will be available this month, according to their website.
Trash Bags currently has three product lines:
Paper Trail, handwoven from recycled newspaper and telephone directories,
Fantastic Plastic, from heat fused plastic grocery sacks, and
Rejuiced, the ever popular juice box bags.
We think this do-gooding Aussie company should be an inspiration to us all. We’d love to see more stuff like this in the US, but until then, we’ll get them to ship overseas.
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Very cool! This reminds me of a Tunisian NGO helping handicaped women create beautiful objects out of recyled waste. Their work is inpired by traditional Tunisian design and is really NICE.