Cotton Tote Bag

If you are the sort of shopper who prefers to buy items that are environmentally friendly, you would be doing the world a big favour if you were to purchase a cotton tote bag. These totes are much more “green” than other tote bags because cotton is an organic material which can be easily recycled.

It is even possible to find tote bags made from recycled cotton and recycled soda bottles! These bags are just as good as other tote bags but with the added benefit of using up some of those non biodegradable bottles. Delphine has some lovely screen printed designs of these bags. You can choose from butterflies and different coloured flowers. The bags have a natural off white colour as if to prove how environmentally friendly they are.

Tote bags in general are quite good for the environment. If you use a tote bag or two to get your weekly shopping instead of collecting more carrier bags from the supermarket then you can give yourself a pat on the back. Tote bags are easily reusable as they are durable and attractive and can hold a lot of weight. Plastic bags are definitely not friends of the environment as they clog up land fill sites and many small animals are killed by plastic bags being littered. Plastic bags also pose a suffocation risk to small children so the cotton bag should always be the first choice of safety conscious mothers.

Cotton bags make excellent promotional products for companies. They are easy to customize with screen printed designs, beads or embroidery so getting a tote bag emblazoned with the company logo is no problem. They are soft but hold a lot of material which is handy for people on conferences or courses that need to carry lots of information around with them. Men can almost get away with carrying a cotton bag, as long as they are full of papers, as they look like shopping bags. Unlike shopping bags, however, they will not break if they get too heavy or if something pointy is put into it. Tote bags are currently the most widely used promotional give-away at trade shows because they give a bigger canvas for company logos than pens or rubbers or mouse pads and are likely to travel a lot further as people reuse them. They last longer too!

If you do not fancy cotton but still wish to preserve our environment, choose a tote bag made of Jute or non-woven fibres. Jute is probably the most eco-friendly material to use as it is made of plant fibres which are easily biodegradable. If you are the kind of person who buys a new bag every month, this may be the best choice for you as it wont really matter if you do throw it away. Do consider donating to a charity shop or to a friend because these bags really do last a long time and it would be a shame not to get the maximum use out of them.