Natural Materials

Choosing the right materials is crucial to designing a sustainable product. Our material selection process takes into consideration its entire life cycle, from crop to compost.

Nowadays, most of the multi-use bags out there are made from synthetic materials, such as polyester. Materials like this do have their place in certain fields and industries, such as the medical field, for example. The issue though, is that such materials are used too widely and for roles that do not necessarily require them. A tote bag, for instance, does not need to be made of a polymer material that will never decompose.

You may have heard that plastic takes something around one thousand years to decompose. That’s not true though. Plastic biodegrades but it never decomposes. It's affected by the same natural elements, such as sunlight and wind, which causes the plastic to break down into ever smaller pieces until it reaches the stages of microplastics and nanoplastics. However, the difference being, the carbon chain that forms it never breaks up. A compostable material, on the other hand, decomposes down to the chemical level, separating the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, etc.

For this reason, all of the fabrics we use are made from natural fibers, such as cotton. Cotton is soft and also strong. Depending on how it’s woven and with what weight/thickness, it can deliver incredible durability, which is why we use cotton canvas. Canvas is a tightly woven fabric, so it’s compact and folds well, holding shape.

Another advantage of cotton is its commercial availability. In our early days we tried hard to work with fabrics made from hemp, because it’s way more sustainable, but it’s incredibly hard to source it. This makes a finished bag made from hemp too expensive to be marketed at a decent price, so unfortunately we have had to step back from that. What we do is that we try our best to use as much organic cotton as possible, all certified organic. Some of our dyed fabrics are not organic because they simply don’t exist in the market in organic form, so we use non-organic in those cases.

We hope one day we’ll be able to make bags entirely made from hemp canvas and linen canvas, and to be able to market them at accessible prices. Until then, we’ll keep trying to implement bits here and there to give the industry a bit of a kickstart.