The Neumatica Bags are Here!

Posted on | July 22, 2009 | No Comments

Our Neumatica bags arrived last week, all the way from Argentina!

We were really concerned about the carbon footprint, but we thought we should try it because Neumatica are doing such brilliant work.  It turned out that Roby (owner of Neumatica) packaged the bags up very small, with no internal filling, and the delivery wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as we expected.  The total carbon cost was 0.37T.  A very small tree can absorb that in one year.  Our office gardgen is next to a wood, so we’re going to plant a new sapling each time we do a Neumatica order.  It’s not at all great, but it’s much better than we feared.  We’re balancing that against the good it does for the local community in Argentina, and our projects here in Wales too, plus there’s less rubber on landfill tips.  Though the bags were squished and squashed in transit, since they are rubber they just bounced back almost as soon as the package was opened.

The bags themselves are gorgeous.  They’ve got a faint, almost musky rubber aroma to them, and they feel much softer than we were expecting.  They’re still tough as old boots (well, tough as old tractor inner tubes, actually), but the surface feels soft to the touch.  Once people get to hear about these bags, they’re going to fly off our stock shelves (by the way, I made the stock shelves myself, from an old staircase I found).

Let us know what you think about this.  Is it worth the transport carbon?  Do you like the bags?  Your comments are welcome.

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