Tote Overload!

The past few months at New York Magazine have been great. I feel like I've had the opportunity to do (and learn) more here than at any other internship. It ends in about two weeks so I hope to update as much as possible about the experience before it does.

I got my first New York print byline in the Year In Culture December 12 issue! Some time in November one of the editors approached me and asked me to do some research about the reusable bags industry, as he had read a short post on the Atlantic Cities blog about a woman in California (Beth Zeigler) who hosted a reusable bags redistribution event. He wanted to know a few things: Did a trade association exist for reusable bags? What are they made of? How much do they cost? We could make something of it depending on what I found. Turns out there definitely is a Reusable Bag Association, comprised of some of the biggest manufacturers in the U.S. Not a ton of research or studies have been conducted, but I found a lot of people associated with the industry who had a lot to say. Sales have increased as people have become more aware of the impact they make on the environment. Being "green" is a thing. Now, manufacturers are churning them out like crazy, to the point where a) a lot of people are purchasing them for really cheap (or getting them for free) and b) they're disposing of them or collecting them, and essentially not using them thus defeating the purpose. My article for the Topic page of the Intelligencer section outlines when reusable bag usage started and its growth. My only thing--I thought the editors removed some crucial information from the final draft. The proliferation is caused largely in part because many of the bags are made of a cheap material called non-woven polypropylene; it allows the manufacturers to sell them for as cheap as $1. Some of the members of the association refuse to produce bags of this material (also, it's not biodegradable)--which I also thought was interesting. It's a young group so I still think they're trying to figure out how they want to represent themselves. It absolutely KILLED me when I read one reader's comment on the site: "All reusable bags are not created equal. This article should differentiate between the (basically trash) polypropylene $.99 bags and a good durable, washable bag like Chicobags or Baggu." I thought that was one of the most important things to tell. But anyway. I know way too much about reusable bags now. Here it is!

“There is a lot of education that needs to happen around the reusable shopping bag movement. The answer isn’t more reusable shopping bags. The answer is more conscious consumption.” - Vincent Cobb, president of reuseit.com, a member of the Reusable Bag Association