Down to Earth Farmers Market | #Chappaqua Real Estate

Down to Earth Markets is pleased to collaborate with ECOBAGS®, maker of sustainably-sourced, reusable shopping bags to encourage people to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags at our farmers markets. Both of our companies are based in Ossining, New York, and together we recently launched the BYOBag program at Ossining’s Down to Earth Market. ECOBAGS® Founder, Sharon Rowe, shares how she pioneered this effort over twenty five years ago:

“I believe that everyone has a right to clean air and clean water in a clean environment and that together we can ‘clean up the planet one bag at a time’™.” – Sharon Rowe, Founder and CEO, ECOBAGS®

I started ECOBAGS® because I was tired of seeing plastic bags stuck in trees and floating in the Hudson River. It didn’t make sense that every time I went into a store, I left with a single-use plastic bag. Why use something once and then throw it away? This was back in 1989. So, I decided I would change my shopping behavior. I decided to bring my own cloth bags to the store, ones that I could use again and again, like the bags I used traveling in Europe years before. I wanted to find bags that would conveniently fold up and expand to hold my purchases – traditional string bags. I couldn’t find any in the USA, so I asked some friends to bring bags back from Europe. What happened next is what inspired me to start my company and my brand.

I began shopping with my reusable bags in NYC and people noticed. They wanted to talk with me. I found out, pretty quickly, that I wasn’t the only person tired of using or seeing plastic bags everywhere (and this was 25 years ago!). There was an interest in reusable options, so I decided to start making them and generate market demand. If you have a belief, like I do, that everyone has a right to clean air, clean water, and a clean environment, then being wasteful and seeing litter (and a lot of it coming from single-use) is personally hurtful in a very deep way.

I also began shopping differently when I started using reusable bags. While I hardly ever purchased processed foods, I now chose produce that wasn’t pre-packed and left other packaged items on the shelf. The end result was zero garbage after putting away all my purchases at home.

I started with the idea of creating zero waste. Twenty five years ago, it was an unsexy term called “source reduction.”

When you decide to question what is really “convenient,” you quickly run into, as Al Gore said, “Inconvenient Truths”. When you “choose to reuse” you can gain insights that will connect you more deeply to the environment. Don’t be surprised, if bringing your own bags to the market leads you to create other changes in your life. Simple actions can and do change the world. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”