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What Are the Shortages of Reuseable Bags

Beautiful, eco-friendly reusable bags are perfect for the grocery store, shopping mall, or the beach, but they do have some shortages.

Reusable shopping bags, made of materials that don't harm the environment during production and don't need to be discarded after each use, reduce pollution and save resources that could be put to better uses than making plastic and paper bags. Excellent reusable bags are manufactured with all-natural, eco-friendly fibers. But each type of reusable bag has shortages that consumers should know when they shop for and use them.
Polypropylene Bags

These are thick plastic bags that are made from recycled or new polypropylene (a type of plastic). They are lower quality than many reusable cloth bags and can wear out over time. Additionally, polypropylene bags that are not made from recycled materials, such as disposable plastic bags, are manufactured from crude oil and are resource-intensive to produce.

Jute Bags

Jute is a soft vegetable fiber that is spun to create durable, long threads. Another name for jute is hessian. Though jute bags are strong, they can't hold moist substances and won't handle leaks well because jute is not a very water-resistant material.

Many crops that produce jute are not organic, so they are grown and harvested with pesticides or other harmful chemical materials. In many cases, jute is not spun near to bag manufacturers, so the carbon footprint resulting from transporting or importing jute bags is significant. These bags can also be more expensive than their polypropylene or cotton counterparts.

Calico, Canvas and Cotton Bags

Calico bags are made of a type of cotton that is not completely refined. It's unbleached and generally uses fewer resources and chemicals to produce. Albury Enviro Bags cautions that calico requires a huge amount of water and pesticides to produce unless it is organically grown. Like jute, it is not moisture-resistant, and it's also more expensive than repurposed plastic bags. Cotton and canvas bags have the same disadvantages, but since they are more refined and processed than calico, each uses even more resources to produce.

Hemp Bags

Green Living Tips indicates that hemp bags cost much and harder to come when it compare with other reusable bags. After all, governments are often reluctantly to grant approval for farmers to grow hemp commercially just because of the plant's negative associations with the mood altering drug, Marijuana. As most hemp products are imported, they use a large number of greenhouse gases through transportation procedures than reusable bags that are produced locally.