Two cheerful new eco-bags are currently gracing the shoulders of Bath shoppers.
The jute shopping bags celebrate Bath’s thriving farmer’s market (the first in the UK) and the busy high street of Moorland Road.
The brain behind the bags is
Penny Ives, a children's author and illustrator who has lived happily in Oldfield Park, Bath for nineteen years - The Bag Lady.
Penny is a keen supporter of shopping locally and feels increasingly dismayed at seeing discarded grey and tattered bags waving dismally from our trees and riverbanks: “Maddened on hearing of animals strangled and choked by plastic, I felt I must stop talking and do something to halt our addiction to the ubiquitous plastic bag.”
Bath Farmers' Market at Green Park every Saturday morning is a wonderful place to buy everything from locally grown vegetables to dark sumptuous chocolate cake, freshly baked bread and biscuits, river salmon, soft cheeses, apple juice and cider or squirrel and venison. But until recently the market has had no bag of its own.
The bag lady, now on a mission, invited children's illustrator Margaret Chamberlain to create a jolly design to capture the essence of this wonderful market. Their bag is strong, roomy, reasonably priced (£3.50), easy on the shoulder with soft wide cotton handles --- and it stylishly shows off your support for the market plus your eco-awareness as you walk around Bath!
Visit the Bag Lady’s stall at Green Park Farmer’s Market in Bath any Saturday to bag yourself some proper eco-credentials and support local food shopping at its finest.
Ian Dicks (currently a cartoonist for The Daily Mail) has also worked with Penny to design a jute bag for Moorland Road, a thriving local shopping area in Oldfield Park, Bath. Ian's witty design shows a little everyman figure shopping happily in his local high street. The £3.50 bags are available from eighteen different shops and businesses – you’ll find them everywhere from the pet shop (great for getting heavy dog food home safely) to the chemist and the book shop.
Buying a Bag Lady bag is a great way to show support for local businesses and shops as well as thinking globally about your best choices for the planet as a consumer.
The bags are sustainably sourced with jute the natural fibre of choice for its low environmental impact and are your way of giving financial support to small farmers and factory workers in India and Bangladesh.
Sustainably sourced with impeccable green credentials –
· Canby bags are fairly traded, carbon neutral and use natural materials instead of oil-based synthetics.
· Jute is virtually an organic textile and a crop with little environmental impact. It is a natural fibre - a tropical cousin of the European lime or linden tree. Jute is cultivated on small farms in the Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys of Bangladesh and India where traditional, nearly organic farming methods are used .
· The company runs a strict ethical trading policy which ensures no undesirable working practices, no sweatshops, no child or bond labour.
Please contact Penny Ives for any further information on the Bag Lady bags. Penny may be emailed through SWillustrators. Use the 'contact' link at the top right of this blog.
