PARO UP-CYCLED TOTES
03·04·20
Everyone is handing out tote bags like they are disposable. But what about the impact they make on the world?
Making a cotton tote uses up resources like water and energy and puts chemical fertilisers and CO2 into the world. If you look at the lifecycle impact, you would have to use a tote bag 173 times to match the carbon footprint of a plastic bag. (*)
Everyone we know has stacks of surplus totes stuffed in cupboards at home, and we really didn't want to make any unnecessary impact on the world by making new totes, so we had an idea... We collected all the sad surplus totes from our mates, and screen printed them to give them a happy, second life as a PARO tote.
Our totes have come from all over the place, from Levis to the Wijnwinkel; where they come from doesn't matter to us, the impact they have made on the world is the same, so we just want to see them used. We're offering PARO totes as gifts to our first customers, but only to people who need a new tote - these totes are not destined for the sad totes cupboard!
(*) Footnote: A study by the UK environment agency in 2011 estimated a cotton tote bag's total carbon footprint was 598.6lb of CO2 emissions compared to 3.48lb for a standard plastic bag. A lot of that is from the resources used to grow the cotton, and obviously plastic bags have bigger issues like that fact they NEVER biodegrade but let's just focus on emissions for this purpose.