All 4 colours now in production

The factory sent us this great image of the 4 colours made up into bags.  At this stage they have not been printed but it gives you some idea of what it is going to look like.  How exciting !!!!!

Display stand arrives from Hong Kong

After lots of work by the design team we have just received our first working sample of the display stand - and we LOVE IT.  The stand comes flat packed and is made out of recycled corrugated cardboard - once again we are trying to reduce on our environmental impact.  Production time for the stands is much quicker than the bags so with any luck stands and bags should arrive in the UK at around about the same time.

Final Design Changes on the Pre-Production Samples

We had a couple of final pre-production sample images come through.  We made  a few small changes - shortened the rope length, tidied up a bit of stitching on the pocket and a couple of adjustments.  These are the images we get from the factory ....

Free Plastic Bags may be banned across Europe

Well this is an interesting story.  The Daily Mail published  a report about proposals to make shoppers pay for single use carrier bags.  Can you imagine what  a difference something like this would make to our environment?   You can read the full story on Mail Online

Sustainable toggles - problem solved

One of the problems we had with the design was the toggles.  In order to make the product as sustainable as possible it was important that even the toggles came from renewable or sustainable wood sources.  We considered all sorts of things but none were really good enough.  Then our manufacturer in Kolkata suggested the possibility of using twigs that had fallen from branches naturally.  We liked that idea, so after a little bit of digging around we managed to find a source.  As a result the bags will have toggles made from twigs that are literally collected from the floor, cut and shaped to our specification and then drilled.  We reckon it is pretty sustainable and they look fanatic as well!

European Commission to publish paper about plastic bags

The European Commission is to publish proposals in the spring designed to reduce the number of plastic bags used in Europe each year. Most of the 15,000 people who took part in a public consultation favoured an outright ban - but what are the options?  For a full report go to the BBC News website

More material arrives at the factory

The light blue has arrived as well.  How exciting :-)