Are Cotton Tote Bags Really Good for the Environment?

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棉布手提袋真的那么环保吗？

Cotton tote bags have become a means for brands， retailers and supermarkets to telegraph a planet-friendly mindset—or， at least， to show that the companies are aware of the overuse of plastic in packaging.

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

An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20，000 times to offset its overall impact of production， according to a study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years—for just one bag.

Producing cotton is water-intensive， and figuring out how to dispose of a disused tote in an environmentally low-impact way is not nearly as simple as people think， according to Travis Wagner， an environmental science professor at the University of Maine.

棉布手提袋已经成为品牌、零售店和超市传达环保理念的一种手段，至少是表明企业对于过度使用塑料包装的态度。（剩余1912字）