Cutting down on plastics at Otter – revealing our new paper carrier bags
Otter Garden Centre
- March 22, 2023
As part of our ongoing environmental commitment, we have redesigned our carrier bags. We are now phasing out our yellow plastic carrier bags in favour of brown paper carrier bags.
They’re are made from 100gsm recycled brown paper and printed with a water based ink, so they are 100% recyclable. Even so, rather than put them into your recycling, we’d encourage customers to reuse them as much as possible. We know some customers use paper bags to make seed pots, a great way to reuse them!
You’ll notice that we have created a fresh contemporary design which we hope you’ll like. We feel this makes the bag useful as a potential gift bag, if you’re buying something for a friend. They’re very sturdy and are a decent size, perfect to carry many of the products we sell. They cost 20p each.
Otter has collected money raised from the sale of our plastic bags over the past year and we’ve raised £2,430. We plan to donate this to a local environmental charity, so watch for news of this soon.
We recently discovered that paper bags were first made in Bristol in the 1850s. They provided a great solution to carrying and storing items and soon became a necessity in society. Plastic bags took over in the 1970s as they seemed so practical and durable, but as more became known about the long-term impact of plastic on the environment, there’s been a move back to paper.
Which materials are best for bags is a complex issue. It takes more energy to manufacture paper bags than plastic, but the benefit is the recyclability of paper – and the fact it can be composted. In your compost heap a paper bag should break down within four months (a plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years!)
In truth, it’s pretty impossible to make a bag without having some sort of environmental impact, no matter what material is used. As our new bags are made from recycled paper it means no new trees are cut down to make the material, which already exists. And if people use their paper bags repeatedly this improves the eco-credentials still further.
There’s no perfect solution to carrier bags – but we believe we’ve opted for the best choice for our business and our customers.
