There are 8 billion tonnes of plastic on the planet but when you throw a piece away, there is no away. In a small step towards reusing what we already have, we’ve created the I Am A Plastic Bag collection. Each bag is made from an innovative new cotton canvas-feel fabric that’s created from 32 half litre recycled plastic bottles. The fabric is then coated with recycled windscreens. Each
piece is designed to never be thrown away. 

Back in 2007 when we launched the original I’m NOT a plastic bag with Antidote and We are what we do, the idea was very simply about awareness of the enormity of single use plastic going into landfill. I’m NOT a plastic bag was really a baptism of fire, it was a project that really seemed to touch a nerve, and in fact the British Retail consortium estimated that the number of single use plastic bags went from 10 billion to 6.1 billion, so it was a phenomenal reduction in virgin plastic, so it’s a project I’m really proud of. Discover more about the project here.

In 2020, knowing the problem was far from solved, we launched I Am A Plastic Bag.The conversation has moved on from one of awareness to one of circularity of materials. There are 8 billion tonnes of plastic on the planet, and the question is how can we stop making more plastic and instead reuse what we already have, rather than it going into landfill.

Personalisation is central to the Anya Hindmarch ethos. We offer the option to customise our plain IAAPB totes with up to three leather initials stitched onto the style. 

Instead of doing a big launch event for London Fashion Week, we closed our London stores for three days and filled them with 90,000 used plastic bottles collected from Anya Hindmarch employees’ local communities. This may seem like an astronomical amount, but it’s the number of plastic bottles which go into landfill every 8.5 minutes. The idea was to shock and connect people to the enormity of the problem of single use plastic. Through the platform of fashion we aim to amplify the message that the circularity of materials really needs to be the new norm – hopefully this family of bags continues to play a part in spreading that message.

It took two years of testing and research to create the Collection. We developed a woven fabric made from recycled PET – recycled plastic bottles. It feels like a really rich cotton canvas, very natural. And we wanted to add a recycled coating to the fabric so that it would be protected. Finding the right coating took a long time – eventually we managed to source a recycled PVB, the plastic which goes between the two pieces of glass in a windscreen to stop it shattering.

The bag is an amazing example of modern craftsmanship and engineering. To make the fabric we recover the bottles, clean them, smash them, break them down into pellets, melt them, make them into fibres, and then weave them into fabric. The fabric is coated with the recycled PVB, then crafted into a beautiful bag in our factory in Florence. The bag is trimmed in leather – we explored several different alternatives, including recycled leather and vegan leather, but in the end returned to leather as the most sustainable and appropriate option. It’s sourced from a Gold Standard Leather Working Group Tannery, which gives assurances in terms of traceability of the skins, no deforestation, and ensuring they’re a product of the meat industry, so nothing goes to waste. True to our motto ‘progress, not perfection,’ we’re always exploring alternatives.

Brands we have discovered on this journey that are tackling the landfill problem with creative and ingenious solutions. Click on each logo to find out more.