The idea for My Last Bag slowly came to life as I entered the world of motherhood when my first boy was born in 2012. Somehow I had always considered myself a fairly health conscious person, after all I was a Kinesiologist with a strong interest in nutrition. Aside from being health conscious I also considered myself to be environmentally aware...
And then all of a sudden there I was; a new mum completely and utterly overwhelmed with this new found love and also completely overwhelmed with my new busy life that wasn’t about ME any longer, but about my bub and everything that comes with that... Before I knew it wet wipe after wet wipe was getting thrown out and even more to my shock; I had become a user of disposable sandwich bags!
The first few years of my first child’s life we lived in a truck travelling Australia. I became increasingly aware of how many single use items there are on this planet. I also slowly came to realise that generally speaking being environmentally aware and acting on this awareness are two separate things.
Waste consciousness seemed to be more of a luxury set aside for people who had time; Time to make reusable lunch bags for their kids ~ time to always have a clean one ready ~ time to carry around bulky Tupperware containers with one babe on the hip and the other in the pram ~ time to have ten glass jars in your shopping bag when going to the bulk food store; The result being that many people in this busy fast paced world of ours simply weren’t managing to act in a waste conscious manner even when the awareness was there.
During these long truck journeys through the never ending red deserts I started dreaming up products; Practical easy to use products making waste consciousness an achievable option for busy people and families alike.
Once we had settled back in the northern rivers of NSW and I had my second boy in my belly I started researching; my main interest was in how different materials impacted our planet; I read any article I could find on the subject and became very interested in the difference between single use paper and single use plastic bags. To my surprise I found that single use paper bags are not much if at all better than single use plastic bags; https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/paper-plastic.htm
We all have our pet hates. Seeing environmentally unaware people lining up in the supermarket with plastic wrapped bananas, every vegetable and fruit in a separate plastic bag, to only then pack all of these in yet another disposable plastic bag is one of mine. But there is something that bugs me even more;
Seeing people convinced that they are being environmentally aware whilst they are not. Bulk food stores slowly became my place of irritation. I watched people putting bulk food after bulk food in paper bags, taking them home in their well chosen reusable shopping bags thinking they were doing the right thing, yet unaware of the truth about paper bags.
This is when I decided My Last Bag, the World’s First Reusable Bag for Bulk Food Shopping had to be my first product.
Baby number two was only a few weeks old when I started this venture. Many told me I was insane, many told me to wait till he was in preschool; there was no rush for me to get back to work. However, I figured that for every reusable bulk food bag used on average 52 bags less a year would end up in landfill; e.g. if one family uses 6 bags a week this is 312 bags per year per family.
Waiting a few years was not an option.