ECOBAGS’ Sharon Rowe and Green Bride Guide’s Kate Harrison

Sharon Rowe started ECOBAGS in 1989 as a teenager, well before the green wave rushed forth. The brand has since adopted the mission statement to “produce quality bags at great prices so that reusable becomes a way of life.”

“I saw a need,” Rowe says of starting ECOBAGS. “I was tired of seeing plastic bags stuck in trees and stuck in the river, and decided I wasn’t going to contribute to that waste stream any longer. It was difficult to find a bag that would do the job, so I started making my own. It’s about cleaning up the planet one bag at a time.”

The line began with a “classic string bag,” an expandable cotton/mesh bag. Since then, ECOBAGS has created canvas bags, produce bags, lunch bags, travel bags and more. The product line can be found nationwide in various food co-ops, produce stores, and retail locations as well as online.

Kate Harrison wrote The Green Bride Guide: How to Create an Earth-Friendly Wedding on Any Budget in 2007 shortly after realizing the difficulty in greening her own wedding.

GreenBrideGuide.com, which followed shortly thereafter, has a simple but noteworthy mission: To help couples use their weddings to promote social and environmental change and support the local green economy.

“The average wedding produces 63 tons of CO2,” Harrison reveals. “With 2.2 million weddings a year, that’s the equivalent of 8 million cars on the road. [Also on average] 400 pounds of garbage per wedding.”

Green Bride Guide walks through engagement rings all the way to the honeymoon offering ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

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