Environment: the tote bag spin a bad cotton thousands of liters of water and pesticides no "useful goodies"
We have gone so much tote bags, that we no longer count them.Finally, if, trying to estimate their number, we listed around thirty ranged in a ball in a larger.And, black or printed, with message or united, they were for their majority offered during a festival, in a clothes shop or as a gift for our participation in the financing of a new media (truthful).In short, the years pass and we always accumulate more cotton bags, thinking of making a gesture all in all trivial to limit plastic pollution.
Could it be an error of appreciation?This is what the New York Times suggests in an article published Tuesday.Indeed, the big American daily pays in turn (five years after The Atlantic) Le Tote Bag - De Tote to "lug" in English -, canvas bag reusable with false ecological appearances.For the past fifteen years, the descendants of the jutebeutel (prized jute canvas bags of the Germans in the late 1970s) have been generalized as an alternative to the Single Use bag.However, the environmental and social cost necessary for the production of these "totems of our time" (dixit the world) is far from negligible and they have become advertising media in its own right, even if it means to paradoxically encourage (on)consumption.
Several impact studies support these allegations.In 2006 for example, the British environmental agency showed, strong counter-teethe, that ecological performance (in particular, carbon footprint) was not better than that of plastic bags.To do better than polyethylene bags used only once, tote bags had to be reused at least 130 times.Worse: According to another report published in 2018, this time from the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food, they must be several thousand times (from 7,000 for a conventional canvas bag to 20,000 for a bagin organic cotton).Or minimum twenty years for daily use, the fault of a textile raw material very greedy in water (several thousand liters for the production of 1 kilo) and pesticides.
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We are therefore very far from the eco-responsible object now promoted by small designers like the giants of fast food, which is not very looking at working conditions in the cotton fields of the main exporters like China.“Each new cotton bag has a production cost that involves a negative environmental impact, also maintains Eloïse Moigno, director of the Slowear fashion label.And when it's organic cotton, there is not enough compared to the demand.It would be better to use this resource to make clothes close to the body, such as underwear.»»
From there to plead for the return of the good old plastic bag, banished from the shelves of supermarkets since 2017?Not really, given their disastrous environmental consequences for the oceans.On the other hand, better use of reusable bags already in our cupboards seems a compromise solution.Very often, the latter only serve a few dozen times before finishing in the trash (and being cremated since the screen printing logos are not biodegradable).Another recommendation, from Zero Waste France, to professionals this time: do not distribute it for free because there is no "useful goodies"».
The association, which promotes the drastic reduction of waste, rather offers to set up in stores contribution or self-service of second-hand bags for customers who would have forgotten theirs."By wanting to solve the question of plastic bags in the checkout, we created a new problem. Il faut donc que les marques évitent le surpackaging, même si elles se privent d’un message publicitaire»», conclut Eloïse Moigno.Last option, for creators concerned with their environmental footprint: it is always possible to make bags with recovered textile material.
