TRASH BAGS: Eco-Friendly (& Fair-trade) Totes
by Gretchen, 06/11/06
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.
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.