Goodbye plastic bags, hello plastic bottles
A mountain of plastic bags under the sink along with a mounting sense of environmental guilt got us thinking – was it time to cut down on our trips to the shop for tea and biscuits or time to find a new way to carry our goods? Predictably, we went with the latter and decided to invest in some sustainable shopping bags. We didn’t want just any old bags though. We wanted something uniquely Neo. Here’s what we did:
- Sourcing the bags
We sourced canvas bags from Salvage Fashion. They’re made from organic cotton cuttings and recycled plastic bottles – the cuttings were shredded, turned back into fine cotton fibres and added to the plastic bottle fibres to create a cotton-polyester blend. That blend was spun into a very fine yarn to produce sturdy fabric for our bags.
- Hacking the logo
Our intern May came up with a geometric interpretation of our Neo logo. She drew it in illustrator and printed it on photocopy paper before using the outline to create a stencil for the colour.
- Applying the colour
We chose some bright fabric paints and applied them to the bags using the logo-shaped stencil.
- Transferring the design
We layered the design over the fabric paint using a gel medium. The gel acted as a container for the ink, sealing it onto the surface of the bag while the paper disintegrated with water.
- The bag reveal
Once the gel had dried we rubbed the paper off to reveal our Neo-branded bags – and another step in our drive to be more conscious consumers.
