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Today marks the first day of Organic September when we celebrate all things grown organically, which includes the organic cotton we grow for our string bags. The GOTS (Global Organic Textile) mark on our bags means that the cotton has been grown without the help of synthetic chemicals, such as fertilisers and pesticides. The extent to which synthetic chemicals accumulate in our environment, moving between generations of animals and up the food chain, is only now beginning to be thoroughly…

Post-it, Velcro, Pyrex, Turtle Bags; we share something in common. As brands we have all become known for one particular product. Chatting to a group of Portuguese stores last week there was a realisation that after 20 years of trading that our wonderful string bags, our hero products, had finally come part of our everyday language. This particular customer had been delighted to find some ‘turtle bags” for their stores only to find that they weren’t!  They then were lucky enough to…

The Turtle Bag has always carried a message: Turtle Bags was set up to raise awareness of the hazards of plastic bags, over 20 years ago.  Our message explaining how turtles visiting UK waters pick up our plastic bags and most have plastic inside them, is the message we send out to the world with each bag. Early this week, I was delighted to be with my fellow BAFTs members at our annual conference and AGM. BAFTS Fair Trade Network UK is a network of independent shops and suppliers dedicated…

The energetic, spirited, bustling, creative Milan may not be the obvious place for discovering a more gentle way of living on our planet. During my visit to last weeks Design Week in Milan, I was met by a gathering of creative souls who are on a mission to do just this. After a beautiful journey by train from London through the Alps last week I arrived to be greeted by a wonderful display of innovative and sustainable design ideas at the Flourisalone: Milan’s Design Week. Changing the…

Be kind to yourself and the planet on World Health Day: Step away from the plastic! It was pictures of tiny little plankton with plastic particles inside them which was the catalyst for setting up Turtle Bags 20 years ago.Way back then, early research was just showing us that the plastic in our oceans was moving into the food chain through the tiniest of plastic particles which are taken up by microscopic plankton.  Twenty years on, and the plastics agenda has broadened:  it’s moved from…

Solidarity from the Soroptimists   Rethinking Homes in Lockdown  We were all challenged in 2020;  For women in rural Bangladesh, flooding magnified the COVID crisis. The communities in southern Bangladesh are on a delta and so each year they expect inundation. However, the 2020 floods in Bangladesh had some remarkable characteristics. The flooding started in late June, earlier than usual, with a never-before seen “triple peak”, resulting in the second-highest level of flooding since…