环保布袋真的环保吗?

Recently, Venetia Berry, an artist in London, counted up the free cotton tote bags that she had accumulated in her closet. There were at least 25.

近日，伦敦的艺术家维妮蒂亚·贝瑞(Venetia Berry)数了数自己衣柜里到底有多少个免费的棉布环保袋——至少25个。

There were totes from the eco-fashion brand Reformation and totes from vintage stores, totes from Soho House, boutique countryside hotels and independent art shops.

它们来自生态时尚品牌Reformation，古着店、Soho House、精品乡村酒店和独立艺术商店。

boutique /buːˈtiːk/ \u2028n.时尚精品小店

A boutique is a small shop that sells fashionable clothes, shoes, or jewellery

vintage /ˈvɪntɪdʒ/adj. 古老的；最佳的；经典高档的；老式的；过时的

ADJ Vintage clothing and furniture is old or secondhand, but usually of good quality. 古旧而优质的 (衣物或家具)

She had two totes from Cubitts, the millennial-friendly opticians, and even one from a garlic farm. “You get them without choosing,” Ms. Berry, 28, said.

她还有两个Cubitts的环保袋，这是一家深受千禧一代喜爱的眼镜品牌，甚至还有一个来自种植大蒜的农场。“你根本都不用说要不要，他们都是直接给，”28岁的贝瑞说。

millennial /mɪˈleniəl/ adj. 一千年的；千禧年的（a person who was born around the time of the millennium, that is around the year 2000） 2000年左右出生的

Eg: Note that Morgan Stanley was the lead underwriter on the Millennial IPO last March. 

optician/ɒpˈtɪʃn/ n. 眼镜商；光学仪器商；光学仪器制造者

An optician is someone whose job is to make and sell glasses and contact lenses. 眼镜商

Cotton bags have become a means for brands, retailers and supermarkets to telegraph a planet-friendly mind-set — or, at least, to show that the companies are aware of the overuse of plastic in packaging. (There was a brief lull in cotton tote use during the pandemic, when there were fears that reusable bags could harbor the virus, but they are now fully back in force.)

环保袋已成为品牌、零售商和超市传达环保理念的一种方式——或者，至少这些公司想要表明它们已经意识到了塑料在包装中被过度使用。（在疫情期间，棉布环保袋曾一度被停用，因为当时人们担心可重复使用的袋子会留存病毒，但现在已经恢复如初了。）

mind-set /‘maindset/ n. 心态；思想的形式

-If you refer to someone's mindset, you mean their general attitudes and the way they typically think about things. 思维模式; 思想倾向

“There’s a trend in New York right now where people are wearing merch: carrying totes from local delis, hardware stores or their favorite steakhouse,” said the designer Rachel Comey. (See: the reboot of “Gossip Girl” for pop culture proof.)

设计师雷切尔·科米(Rachel Comey)说：“纽约当下掀起了一波背环保购物袋的风气，大家会背一些本地熟食店、五金店和最喜爱的牛排餐厅的手提袋。”（《绯闻女孩》的再次播出也足以证明此观点。）

So far, so earth-friendly? Not exactly. It turns out the wholehearted embrace of cotton totes may actually have created a new problem.

但是，环保袋真的环保吗？未必。事实证明，棉布手提袋潮流可能引发了新的问题。

An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years — for just one bag. According to that metric, if all 25 of her totes were organic, Ms. Berry would have to live for more than a thousand years to offset her current arsenal. (The study has not been peer-reviewed.)

根据丹麦环境和食品部(Ministry of Environment and Food)2018年的一项研究，一个有机棉环保袋需要被使用2万次才能抵消其生产过程中对环境的总体影响。也就是说，如果每天都只使用同一个袋子，那也得用上54年。照这样计算，如果贝瑞的25个环保袋都是有机棉的，她必须得活1000多年才能抵消她目前所用环保袋带来的影响。（该研究尚未经过同行评审。）

arsenal /ˈɑːsənl/ n. 兵工厂；军械库；武器；

-An arsenal is a large collection of weapons and military equipment held by a country, group, or person. 武器

“Cotton is so water intensive,” said Travis Wagner, an environmental science professor at the University of Maine. And figuring out how to dispose of a tote in an environmentally low-impact way is not nearly as simple as people think.

缅因大学(University of Maine)环境科学教授特拉维斯·瓦格纳(Travis Wagner)指出，棉布的生产需要大量的水。而且如何以对环境造成较小影响的方式丢弃环保袋，也并不像人们想象的那么简单。

You can’t, for example, just put a tote in a compost bin.

比如，你不能把环保袋直接扔进堆肥箱中。

And only 15 percent of the 30 million tons of cotton produced every year actually makes its way to textile depositories.

每年生产的3000万吨棉花中，只有15%会被制成纺织品。

depository /dɪˈpɒzɪtri/ n. 贮藏所；受托者；存储处；仓库（同 depositary）

A depository is a place where objects can be stored safely. 存储处

Even when a tote does make it to a treatment plant, most dyes used to print logos onto them are PVC-based and thus not recyclable; they’re “extremely difficult to break down chemically,” said Christopher Stanev, the co-founder of Evrnu, a Seattle-based textile recycling firm. Printed patterns have to be cut out of the cloth; Mr. Stanev estimates 10 to 15 percent of the cotton Evrnu receives is wasted this way.

即使环保袋真的被送到了垃圾处理厂，用于印制徽标的大多数染料也包含聚氯乙烯，因此无法被回收利用；位于西雅图的纺织品回收公司Evrnu的联合创始人克里斯托弗·斯塔内夫(Christopher Stanev)说，这些染料“极难通过化学方式分解”。袋子上的印花图案必须被裁掉；斯塔内夫估计，Evrnu收到的棉花中有10%到15%是因为这个原因而浪费掉。

dyes /daɪ/v. 给……染色；n. 染料，染液

-Dye is a substance made from plants or chemicals which is mixed into a liquid and used to change the colour of something such as cloth or hair. 染料

At which point there is the issue of turning old cloth into new, which is almost as energy intensive as making it in the first place. “Textile’s biggest carbon footprint occurs at the mill,” Ms. Bédat said.

下一个问题就是，将旧布变成新布的过程几乎与最初制作时的耗能一样。贝达特说：“纺织品最大的碳足迹就在纺织厂。”

The cotton tote dilemma, said Laura Balmond, a project manager for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular campaign, is “a really good example of unintended consequences of people trying to make positive choices, and not understanding the full landscape.”

艾伦·麦克阿瑟基金会(Ellen MacArthur Foundation)的“让时尚循环”(Make Fashion Circular)活动的项目经理劳拉·巴尔蒙德(Laura Balmond)表示，棉布环保袋的两难困境是一个非常好的例子，说明人们试图做出积极的选择，但因为没有了解整体情况，导致了意想不到的后果。

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Arguably, it was the British designer Anya Hindmarch who put the reusable cotton bag on the map. Her 2007 “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” tote, created with the environmental agency Swift, sold for around $10 (£5) in supermarkets. It encouraged shoppers to stop buying single-use bags and went effectively viral.

英国设计师安雅·欣德马奇(Anya Hindmarch)可以说是让可重复使用棉布袋名声大噪的主要推手。她在2007年与环保机构Swift合作制作的“我不是塑料袋”(I’m Not a Plastic Bag)环保袋在超市以约45元（5英镑）的价格售出。这鼓励购物者停止购买一次性塑料袋，并迅速得到了迅速传播。

“Eighty thousand people queued in one day in the U.K.” alone, the designer said. And it was effective. The number of bags bought in the U.K. dropped from around 10 billion to about six billion by 2010, according to the British Retail Consortium. “It was important at the time to use fashion to communicate the problem,” Ms. Hindmarch said.

设计师说，仅在“英国一天就有8万人排队”。而且这种方式很有效。根据英国零售商协会(British Retail Consortium)的数据，到2010年，在英国购买的塑料袋数量从大约100亿个下降到大约60亿个。欣德马奇说：“用时尚来表达这个问题在当时很重要。”

Naturally, it soon became a branding tool. The famed cream-and-black New Yorker tote turned into a status symbol; since 2014, the Condé Nast-owned weekly has gifted two million bags to subscribers, according to a spokesman for the magazine.

Kiehls, the skin care line, offers totes for $1, while fashion brands like Reformation began bagging purchases in black cotton versions; Lakeisha Goedluck, 28, a writer in Copenhagen, said she has “at least six.” Some customers get rid of theirs by selling them on Poshmark.

护肤系列科颜氏(Kiehls)提供1美元的环保袋，而Reformation等时尚品牌开始用黑色棉布版本的袋子装商品；28岁的哥本哈根作家莱克伊莎·格德勒克(Lakeisha Goedluck)说这样的袋子她“至少有六个”。一些顾客在Poshmark（二手交易电商平台——编注）把它们转手卖掉。

The idea, said Shaun Russell, the founder of Skandinavisk, a Swedish skin care brand that is a registered B Corp — or business that meets certain standards for social or environmental sustainability — is “to use your customers as mobile billboards.” It’s free advertising. “Any brand that claims otherwise would be lying,” he added.

瑞典护肤品牌Skandinavisk是一家获得B Corp认证的企业，即符合特定社会环境或推动环境可持续发展的标准企业。该公司创始人肖恩·拉塞尔(Shaun Russell)说，商家用环保袋是为了“将顾客用作移动广告牌”。这就是一种免费广告。他还说：“任何以其他理由进行推广的品牌都是在撒谎。”

Suzanne Santos, the chief customer officer of Aesop, doesn’t know exactly how many ecru bags the Aussie beauty brand produces every year but admitted it’s “a lot.” Aesop, which is also a registered B Corp, first introduced them as shopping bags a decade ago; Ms. Santos said customers consider them “an emblematic part of the Aesop experience.” So much so that the brand receives angry emails when they don’t arrive with online orders. “Abuse would be the right word,” she said, describing it over a Zoom call from Sydney. (Ms. Santos said customers wanting to offload their excess bags can return them to stores, though Aesop doesn’t advertise that possibility on its website or in-store.)

Aesop的首席顾客官苏珊·桑托斯(Suzanne Santos)说，她不知道这家澳大利亚美容品牌每年生产多少环保袋，只是承认有“很多”。同为B Corp注册企业的Aesop在十年前推出这种袋子，当时将其作为购物袋使用，桑托斯说，顾客们认为这些袋子是“Aesop象征性体验的一部分”，以至于有人因为网购订单没有随附袋子而发来表示愤怒的邮件。“准确说是辱骂，”她在悉尼在Zoom接受采访时这样形容道。（桑托斯说，顾客要是想清理掉手头多余的袋子，可以还给店里，不过Aesop在网站和门店都没有明确告知可以这样做。）

Cotton bags have long existed in luxury; shoes and handbags come in protective dust wrappings. But the supposed sustainability of totes means more brands than ever are packaging wares in ever more layers. Items that don’t even need protection from dust, like hair scrunchies, organic tampons and facial cleansers, now arrive swaddled in a sleeping bag.

棉布袋在奢侈品行业由来已久；鞋履和手袋出售时是有带有防尘保护包装的。但这种环保形象导致越来越多的品牌开始加入更多层的包装。一些根本不需要防尘保护的产品，比如束发皮筋、有机卫生棉条和洗面奶，如今也是包在袋子里进行出售。

“It’s just packaging on top of packaging on top of packaging,” said Ms. Bédat.

“包装得里三层外三层，”贝达特说。

That’s not to say cotton is worse than plastic, or that the two should even be compared. While cotton can use pesticides (if it’s not organically grown) and has dried up rivers from water consumption, lightweight plastic bags use greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels, never biodegrade and clog up the oceans.

不过这倒不是说棉花比塑料还糟，两者根本不具有可比性。棉花需要用到杀虫剂（如果不是用有机方法终止的话），其用水量也会导致河流干枯，但轻质塑料袋要用到有温室气体排放的化石燃料，它永远无法生物降解，还会形成海洋垃圾。

Weighing the two materials against each other, “we end up in an environmental what-about-ism that leaves consumers with the idea that there is no solution,” said Melanie Dupuis, a professor of environmental studies and science at Pace University.

将这两种材料放在一起进行比较，“就导致了一种环保的比烂主义，让消费者觉得并没有什么解决方案，”佩斯大学(Pace University)环境研究和科学教授米兰妮·杜普伊斯(Melanie Dupuis)说。

Buffy Reid, of the British knitwear label &Daughter, halted production of her cotton bags in April this year; she’s planning to implement an on-site feature where customers can opt into receiving one. Though Aesop isn’t halting production, the brand is converting the composition of their bags to a 60-40 blend of recycled and organic cotton. “It will cost us 15 percent more,” said Ms. Santos, but “it reduces water by 70 to 80 percent.”

英国针织服装品牌&Daughter的巴菲·里德(Buffy Reid)在今年4月停止了棉布环保袋的生产，她打算在门店实施一种政策，只有顾客主动询问时，店员才会提供袋子。Aesop虽然没有停产，但是打算将袋子的成分改成60%回收棉和40%有机棉。“这会提高15%的成本，”桑托斯说，但是“用水量可以降低70%到80%”。

Some brands are turning to other textile solutions. The British designer Ally Capellino recently swapped cotton for hemp, while Ms. Hindmarch introduced a new version of her original tote, this time made from recycled water bottles; Nordstrom also uses similar bags in its stores.

有的品牌在选择别的面料方案。英国设计师埃莉·卡佩里诺(Ally Capellino)近日把棉布改成了麻布，而欣德马奇推出了一种新版托特袋，是回收水瓶制作的；Nordstrom的门店里也有类似的袋子。

In the end, the simplest solution may be the most obvious. “Not every product needs a bag,” said Ms. Comey.

最简单的解决方案其实显而易见。“并非所有产品都需要袋子，”科米说。

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