Cotton tote bags (tote bags in general) have picked up major popularity in recent years due to the growing understanding of how bad plastic bags are for the environment. Companies market totes as the environmentally friendly alternative because they are reusable and not made of plastic. It is very much “plastic bad” “other materials good”, not taking into account that reusable bags can have major environmental impacts that are just not as obvious to the public. It’s one of the primary effects of this newfound attack on plastic not being an acceptable material, but ignoring that other commonly used materials such as cotton can be detrimental to the planet as well. The tote bag has become one of the most common forms of ‘corporate environmentalism’ (firm-level efforts to reduce pollution and resource use along with protecting natural habitats). The reason why cotton tote bags are so harmful is because of how much resources are needed for cotton to grow. Cotton is known to use absurd amounts of water for it to grow, it being up there for the most water consuming crop between what it needs to grow and the processing process to turn it into textile products. Cotton farming is the primary reason for which the Aral Sea dried up, cotton farms surrounded it and quickly drained most of the water over the latter half of 20th century and early 21st century. Even though plastic bags are by no way good for the environment a cotton tote bag needs to be used around 20,000 times or for 54 years daily for it to totally offset the resources needed for its production. I can confidently say that 99%+ of tote bags are not going to be used for that long that frequently. After they are used you can not even recycle them because the logos, writing, or prints on them are most often PVC-based and those are incredibly hard to break down and are not recyclable. The only way to recycle them is to cut out the prints, but that accounts for 10 – 15% of fabric on average. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but adds over time, however still better than not being able to recycle at all. People will most likely not take the time to take this measure. Aside from the water needed to make them, a large part of the reason why cotton tote bags are having such a negative impact is because they are produced in copious amounts. Companies will often give them out for free or they will be very cheap, depending on where you get them. This semesterI have been given three reusable bags (although one non-cotton bag).
One of my families cotton tote bags
- Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html
https://brightly.eco/blog/cotton-tote-bag-environmental-impact
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/cotton