This is one of my favourite tote bags to carry around, from a brand that uses conscious materials, the products go through sustainable processes and ethical manufacturing.

But are tote bags really eco-friendly? According to the Atlantic, “They’re green in principle, but not in the way people use them.” The problem is when you start piling them. The abundance itself defeats the purpose. They are given away everywhere, at seminars, bookshops, which are poorly made and hardly last, paving way for more accumulation. The key is making sure you have only 2-3 good quality totes that you use till they have fulfilled their purpose. Only if you USE and not ACCUMULATE, is anything “eco-friendly” actually going to be “eco-friendly”.

As for me, let me tell you why this particular one is my favourite. The print says, “Houston, we have a problem” which is a quote from the communication between the Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert and the NASA Mission Control Center ("Houston"), as the astronauts communicated their discovery of the explosion that crippled their spacecraft. Since then, the quote has been used to account for the emergence of an unseen problem, mostly with irony.

In this particular bag, the astronaut watches with horror as the earth seems piled with debris. As I go around using this, the print acts like a reminder time and again, why we need to use totes more often and give up on the use of plastic and disposables.