Dear Plum,
My wife shops at your stores frequently, says its about the only place she can get the kind of jeans she likes; I say, fine, but when are you going to acknowledge the environment and do something about your bags? Each time she shops at Plum we gain another plasticky bag with heavy strings attached--what am I supposed to do with it? Why can't you get on the bandwagon like other progressive stores and have biodegradeable bags? Surely they can be just as strong and just as attention-getting as your lime green, blue string bags, which I still don't know what to do with because I can't even tell if they're plastic or paper--or what.
M.
Dear M,
Thanks for the input. Actually you are correct, the "bandwagon" is the so-called bio-degradable bags but we have done some research and the so called bio-degradable isn't as good as the name suggests. We have discovered that from 'marketing' perspective they are wonderful but from an environmental point of view the jury is still out. The plastic in them remains and is washed into the water system because what holds the plastic molecules together decomposes but the plastic doesn't decompose.
We are not experts and are trying to do our best but that didn't sound right to us. So we chose to go with a bag that was actually reusable. IE: better quality and easy to use for going shopping. We felt customers like your wife might use them again! We made our small bag usable as a lunch bag and we sell a really nice reusable bag for half of what they cost to produce.
We also explored the option of having paper. Unfortunately, it meant cutting down a tree ... not so good. Plus it also meant much larger packaging and therefore higher fuel costs for transport (not good for air quality). So now we have a paper bag to replace the plastic lunch bag and it is made completely of recycled paper. Customers seem to respond better to the paper bag. We also recycle all our plastic that we receive when our products are delivered from overseas. Local deliveries are done in our own truck which is an old 1980's beater but it is propane fueled ... we found it impossible to purchase a new truck because the new computerized engines we could not convert to propane.
It isn't easy as you can imagine, to be environmentally conscious ...but we are doing our best. If your wife brings the bag back when she goes shopping we would gladly take it back and reuse it but what we would really love to see is if she reused it again ... that way we all win.
Thanks again for the input.
Ed ... read the full post and reader comments
