Eco-Friendly Never Looked So Good

Second Edition Eco-Bag In Stores!

Commercial Drive's old street banners get second life as reusable shopping bags!

Almost every year the Commercial Drive Business Society prints 256 32" x 60" nylon street banners which help create a festive, colourful atmosphere for this unique shopping neighbourhood. Eventually each edition of these unique designs must be retired, so rather than sending them to the landfill they've come up with a very green idea — transform them into reusable nylon shopping bags!

By converting our first 3 year's worth of banners (768 banners) into reusable nylon shopping bags rather than using new fabric, we have:

• avoided the equivalent of 10,588 pounds or 5.3 tons of CO2 emissions
• freed up 814 trees to capture and store CO2 from other sources for a full year
• avoided sending 192 kg (422.4 lb) of nylon to the landfill
• saved 38,184,960 BTUs of energy – enough to provide electricity to an average Vancouver home for over 15 months.

"This green initiative even goes one step further", explains Ian McSorley, marketing chair for Commercial Drive. "ALL proceeds from the sale of these shopping bags will be donated to the development of new green spaces in the neighbourhood."

Bei Linda Tang, owner of, Dream Designs says, "We are pleased to contribute to this fabulous community initiative by designing and manufacturing these shopping bags on a cost recovery basis. Each of them is a unique embodiment of the Commercial Drive history that we are proud to be part of."

Bags retail for $9.95 from these Commercial Drive retailers:

• A Small World Shop and Gallery, 2120 Commercial Drive, T: 604.215.0279
• Banshee Clothing, 1566 Commercial Drive, T: 604.254.7240
• Barefoot Contessa, 1928 Commercial Drive, T: 604.255.9035
• Dream Designs, 956 Commercial Drive, T: 604.254.5012
• Drive Organics, 1047 Commercial Drive, T: 604.678.9665
• Kali, 1000 Commercial Drive, T: 604.215.4568
• Lucky Rooster, 1706 Charles Street, T: 604.251.9119
• Mintage, 1714 Commercial Drive, T: 604.871.0022
• Network Apparel, 1832 Commercial Drive, T: 604.683.8011
• Riot, 1395, Commercial Drive, T: 604.254.5073
• Spakwus Organic Eco Spa, #102-1638 E. Broadway, T: 604.879.8367
• Spank on the Drive, 1027 Commercial Drive, T: 604.255.1131
• Ten Thousand Villages, 1204 Commercial Drive, T: 604.323.9233
• Unityoga Teahouse, 1672 E. 10th Avenue, T: 604.708.8369
• Womyns'Ware, 896 Commercial Drive, T: 604.254.2543
  

Source: thedrive.ca