Iceland introduces a new fashionable paper shopping bag in fashion month

Supermarket shopping bags are not normally known for their fashion credentials – until now.

Iceland’s new supermarket shopping bag, ‘I’m a paper bag’, was launched over the weekend in tandem with London Fashion Week, and they look, well, rather fashionable.

In a shopping bag design – tall, with two top handles – the carriers are made of paper: extra strong paper. Made using wood from sustainably managed forests, they are both PEFC-certified and widely recycled, so, far more eco-friendly than the typical plastic alternatives.

Perhaps best of all they have the capacity to carry up to 16kg of produce – the equivalent of roughly 70 packs of frozen burgers.

On sale for 15p each, the bags are currently available from 38 Iceland stores across the UK, with plan being to roll them out across more Iceland supermarkets if they prove successful.

Iceland's initiative is part of an on-going national effort to reduce the UK's reliance on single-use plastic bags. Between 2018 and 2019, government data revealed 549 million were sold by the seven main retailers – Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, The Co-operative Group, Marks and Spencers, and Morrisons.

Although that is a marked improvement on the 1.04 billion sold the year before – a reduction of almost half – more needs to be done if this figure is to be reduced even further in the coming years.