The Carrinet Veggio reusable bag is made from food grade, 100% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The bag is machine washable, easy to dry, and allows fresh produce – such as fruit and vegetables – to breathe and stay fresh for longer.
The drawstring bag, which can hold up to 10kg of produce, comes with a side label for attaching scanning price tags. Its netting design means that fruit and vegetables can be rinsed inside the bag, much like a colander.
The aim, according to Carrinet CEO and founder Mia Ekblad, is to offer an alternative solution to plastic bags: “If every household would use a Veggio every time they go shopping, they would be able to reduce their use of plastic bags by 250 bags a year.
“This result is a saving of one billion plastic bags every year, just in Sweden.”
Expanding consumer choice in supermarkets
According to 2Tech, which is distributing Veggio in the UK, consumers should see the bag in the same vein as reusable coffee cups and shopping bags.
“The idea is that consumers pop them into their reusable shopping bag. We’ve adopted coffee cups, we’ve adopted reusable water bottles and reusable carrier bags. I see these as the next item,” 2Tech’s Annette Lees told FoodNavigator.
“They are designed to help consumers make a choice about not using the free plastic bags in supermarkets,” Lees continued. “I’d like to see people stop using all the packaging they are forced to use in supermarkets.”
The end goal is for all supermarkets to stock these recyclable bags permanently, to expand consumer choice and build the circular economy.
“They are circular in so far as they are taking plastic bottles out of landfill to make them, and they are made with virtually zero emissions in the Far East. Their packaging consists only of two staples and a piece of card,” Lees explained.
“For all the rhetoric, there just hasn’t been a credible solution in supermarkets,” she suggested. When I go shopping, I’m unable to buy [barely] anything loose. So I’ve almost stopped buying groceries from supermarkets, and I think lots of people are doing that as a result.
Carrinet’s Veggio bag is “giving customers the choice to go and buy loose veg…in something that can be used over and over and over.”
