School Backpacks

Every student, from kindergartner to collegiate, has a book bag. Even with textbooks being rapidly swapped out for laptops, there’s always a full load to be carted through the halls. For a lot of us, buying new school backpacks in the fall is a relatively thought-free endeavor; we head to the store, offer the choices to the soon-to-be-student, and proceed to check out. But there’s more going on here than zippers and pockets, and you might inadvertently be sending your child to school with some serious environmental-impact strapped to their back.

You can find our selection of Ecolution products here.

Sometimes the greener choice is simple. Other times, it might not work for you. Tell us your preference by voting and commenting below.

Conventional Polyester Backpack

Ecolution Hemp Sling Backpack

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Pros

There’s no denying that there are some perks to grabbing one of the backpacks on display at your local department store: They tend to be relatively cheap, come in a range of colors, and—here’s the usual clincher—they’re right there in front of you. Like a lot of things, it’s easy to go for a conventional backpack for reasons of convenience.

Fabric is the biggest factor here. Hemp offers many solutions to current environmental issues: It grows well under almost any condition, grows quickly, requires little to no herbicides or pesticides, improves soil structure, and can actually clean toxins from the ground through a nifty process called phytoremediation (hemp was planted for this purpose at the Chernobyl site). Ecolution manufactures their hemp products in Romania and one of its goals is that their operations be politically, socially, economically and environmentally responsible.

Cons

There are a few big drawbacks to conventional backpacks that we often don’t think about. Perhaps the biggest is the fabric issue. Polyester is derived from petroleum, so instantly it’s got resource consumption going against it, but the chemicals required in its manufacturing are also suspect, with extended exposure seeming to result in some pretty serious health problems. Beyond the materials concerns is the fact that some conventional backpacks are made under very poor working conditions.

The Ecolution hemp backpack will probably cost you a bit more than a conventional backpack (usually about $20 extra). Also, your choices as far as color and style are a little more limited.

The Big Picture

With a full load of school supplies to buy it can be difficult to forego the conventional, cheaper backpack for the greener choice, though the petroleum based polyester is clearly more harmful on the environment.

Knowing that you’re involved in something that benefits the world on multiple levels is worth the extra buck and demonstrating to your children that we have to watch out for our environment will reward you—and them—for years.

Do the math

$30.00

$64.00

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