flip & tumble- reusable bags

We surveyed shoppers. Almost everyone has reusable bags, so why aren�t they getting used? Too difficult to remember. Too many unplanned shopping trips. Just too hard.

You�ve been there, done that. You know the moment you get to the checkout line, you remember the bags are at home by the front door, or maybe they are just in the trunk of your car. In any case, they are not there when you need them.

We saw a a big problem. After all, reusable bags are really only useful if they actually get reused. We figured if we could make the bags small enough to simply be kept with you all the time, there would be no more forgetting. We designed our bags to be small enough to stash in a messenger bag, purse, or pocket, so they are simply there when you needed them We had them tested by friends, family, and just about anyone who was willing to give them a try, and they worked! We knew we had something we wanted to share when even our most forgetful friends were reusing their bags.

The average person in the US goes through 332 bags a year. Often we use these bags for what amounts to just minutes or hours, but plastic bags stick around for 500+ years.

While biodegradable bags and paper bags are a bit better in terms of decomposing, the real problem is that there is a lot of wasted energy making single-use bags. It takes a commitment to change, but once you get the hang of carrying reusable bags all the time, you�ll find that they�re good for all sorts of things: carrying those extras to work, toting gear to the beach or to the soccer field, having an extra travel bag, or maybe just as a hackeysack for kicking back with some friends.

At heart we are designers. We like taking those pesky, annoying problems and finding clever, simple, joyful solutions. We, Hetal Jariwala and Eva Bauer, met while attending Stanford Universitys Product Design graduate program where worked on everything from redesigning the public transportation experience to making kites that flew in the clear blue sky. After graduating we quickly figured out that the standard 9-5 hohum wasn't working for us so we took the leap and started flip & tumble.

Information found on flip & tumble website.