The Paper Bag is reused
At least four more shopping trips after the first one, verified in the laboratory by ITENE. Its strength does not run out when you get home: it starts over every time you pick it up.
The second half of its story begins when it arrives home.
The myth
One purchase, many uses
For years, the paper bag has been wrongly associated with being a single-use product. Reality proves otherwise: they are designed to remain useful once they reach the home.
Its strength and functionality allow it to be used again for new purchases, to carry personal items or to store belongings. The load changes, but the bag continues.
9 out of 10 consumers reuse paper bags
SOURCE:
To go shopping again
To carry their things
to store belongings
The action
The concept of reuse
Every time we reuse a bag, we extend its useful life and make better use of the resources used to manufacture it. When that new use avoids the need for another bag, we also reduce the need to consume more materials to fulfil the same function.
For this reason, it is worth keeping it after shopping and having it to hand for when it is needed again. Reusing a paper bag is a simple action that we can incorporate into our daily tasks.
It is as simple as continuing to use it as long as it remains useful.
This continuity is part of consumer habits.
The shopping changes.
The bag remains the same.
Verified
Laboratory tested, four uses or more
Reusing a bag means using it again for the same purpose for which it was designed: carrying a purchase. ITENE, the Technological Institute for Packaging, Transport and Logistics, put it to the test and established a minimum of four reuses as a benchmark.
The bags evaluated passed five sequences of tensile and fatigue tests, regardless of the type of handle, both in the textile trade and in other commercial uses.
SOURCE: ITENE, ‘Evaluation method for the reusability of paper bags’. It takes the definition of reuse from Law 11/1997 and Directive 94/62/EC as a reference.
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Blog articles on reuse
About Us
Who manufactures these bags?
Behind every paper bag there is much more than just a product. There are forest owners, engineers, technicians, designers, and companies that have been innovating for decades to meet the needs of the retail sector.
We are manufacturers of bags, paper, handles, inks, and machinery, united to promote sustainable consumption and innovate in service of retail and consumers.
Long before Europe promoted the new regulatory framework, the paper bag was already moving in that direction. The future doesn’t start today: it has been built over many years.