Living the perfect sustainable life isn’t going to happen overnight. Today, we’re going to talk about something that can (quite literally!) help you in your journey: your backpack.
The majority of trusty two-straps are made from a mixture of materials, most of which are notoriously bad for the environment. This includes plastics such as nylon or cotton, a surprisingly water and energy-intensive material to produce.
Canvas is another common material that, at first, may seem like the more sustainable option, but that is often mixed with plastic too.
All of this leads to them ending up in landfills, where the plastics can stick around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, filtering out to our oceans, damaging marine ecosystems, and affecting our food chain.
Unlike many of our other weekly tips, rucksacks and other bags are obviously not single-use. Indeed, they can actually last quite a long time. So you may be thinking, why buy a sustainable version at all?
While anything only used once is clearly harmful to the environment, every single one of your purchases has an impact. Human’s misuse of resources has put the planet in a difficult predicament, and we are the only ones that can stop it.
Conserving resources and using eco-friendly products is an excellent way for every person to participate in the preservation of our planet and ecosystem. After all, these changes in our individual lives can push businesses and governments to do the same.
You’re not just benefitting the planet either; it can also be better for you. Buying second-hand, for example, can be significantly cheaper, and extending a products life span is a great way to make it more eco-friendly.
The problem is even long-lasting products like backpacks reach a point where they simply need to go. In that case, usually when a strap has snapped, you’re missing a zip, and there are too many mystery stains to count.
This is when buying eco-friendly alternatives can really matter. Some may use waste materials, actively removing them from the environment, and most will use the most sustainable manufacturing methods, too, such as eliminating the use of dyes and minimizing chemical, water, and energy use.
One company that really takes this ethos to heart is Lost in Samsara.
Samsara is a Sanskrit word referring to the “cycle of aimless wandering and mundane existence” we often find ourselves in. “Lost in Samsara” refers to how we can get so caught up in our daily routines that we become blind to the harm they inherently cause.
Their goal: to offer a way to ‘jump off the hamster wheel’ and help empower the people who make the products we buy while preserving the environment we all live in.
Lost in Samsara was founded in 2015 for the people that want to wear the values they believe in. They have a range of modern ethical accessories, including rucksacks, handbags, jewellery, wallets, and other accessories.
These everyday accessories are made by upcycling a number of materials, such as old tires, that would otherwise have gone to landfill.
The creation of these products provides employment opportunities for small cooperatives of artisans that come from underprivileged backgrounds and are otherwise unable to work. On top of that, they support reforestation by planting a tree for every order and offsetting the delivery!
They believe, just as we do here at Play it Green, that small actions count and that small actions multiplied by millions can change the world. The system cannot change overnight, but we can rebel every day by supporting a different and fairer system where we all respect each other and the planet we live in.
If you would like to support a sustainable business today (and get a very cool, fashionable bag), you can use the discount code ETHREV15 for 15% off.