A bag for carrying ideals
These tote bags took For Next Generation Design (FNG) two years to develop. Each bag is made of 100% recycled PET plus three wooden buttons, with the goal of reducing use of the planet’s resources.
PET bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a type of polyester. After recovered bottles are washed, shredded, and melted into polyester resin pellets, the material is drawn into fibers and spun into yarn, which is used to weave fabric to be made into clothing and other woven goods. Taiwan’s recycled PET fiber technology is already extremely mature, and many international clothing brands use environmentally friendly fiber from Taiwan.
FNG founder Tsai Jinpeng—nicknamed “Tsai Tsai”—states that most such brand-name garments contain 10‡50% recycled fiber. The reason they do not use 100% recycled fiber is not due to technological issues, but to cost. Fiber made from recycled PET is about 40% more expensive than fiber from new materials.
Despite the much higher costs, Tsai Tsai argues that only when products are made from 100% recycled PET fiber, and the materials can be returned their original state when they are recycled after the products have worn out, can the ideal of the circular economy be genuinely put into practice, without creating any burden on the environment.
The crowdfunding campaign for the PET tote bags included plans for purchasing used bottles from recyclers on better terms. FNG has been cooperating with Do You a Flavor, a social enterprise that has long been helping recyclers, to purchase PET bottles from them at five times the market price.
Tsai Tsai says that the individual recyclers who collect recyclables in local communities are usually poor people, and are often stigmatized. But each one has his or her own sad backstory. Despite earning only a few hundred NT dollars from a whole day of collecting recyclables, they choose waste collection because they have no other choice. Nevertheless, recyclers earn their income through their own toil, so if FNG can raise the price for collecting PET bottles, this will not only help recyclers economically, it will also be a sign of respect to these people who work so hard to make a living.
Rather than marketing PET tote bags using slogans based on environmental protection or improving the welfare of the disadvantaged, Tsai Tsai hopes to sell the bags based on their attractiveness and functionality. Besides being used as tote bags, they can be folded down into bags for carrying a fitness bottle or other drinks container. The tote bags, which are over 30 centimeters deep, can also be folded down to the size of one’s palm, making them very convenient to carry around. The only materials in them are recycled PET fibers and three wooden buttons, and their design has been gradually optimized by adjusting the position of the buttons to make the bags easier to fold away, and to correctly place the center of gravity when they function as a drinks bag. These adjustments were made millimeter by millimeter, revealing that what appears to be a simple tote bag is not simple at all.
“Tsai Tsai,” the founder of For Next Generation Design (FNG), uses the power of design to give new life to recycled PET bottles.