Like many people my age, I grew up riding a bicycle. It wasn’t just for fun, but was practical transportation from my rural home a few miles outside our small Wisconsin town to wherever I wanted to go from the age of 10 or so until I got my driver’s license. Now more and more people are biking, and the reasons are many and varied. After years riding a bike very sporadically (as evidenced by the dust and cobwebs I needed to clean off each time I took mine out of the garage), a few years ago I finally ditched my old 10-speed and got a new hybrid bike with a comfortable seat, which I’m trying to use more...
Passengers push their bus up a slippery steep slope near Nalae in Luang Prabang Province Laos. The Namtha (River Tha) can be seen far below. Having made it through the greasy mud into the District Center, Nalae, Sack finds these young Khmu boys eager and proud to show a Nature Bag made by their family. That's Sack in Nalae talking with a local woman about bag crafting villages in nearby mountains. She knew where they were and how to contact them to help meet future global demand for Earth’s Greenest Bag™. Bokeo Province villager uses 2 Nature Bags. The heavy load of corn looks like a pain in the neck, but she's...
The traditional Khmu bag, known today as Nature Bag, Earth’s Greenest Bag™ is endangered. The craft of making it rapidly is disappearing from large areas in Laos’ north. A traditional bag can take days to make. In August 2012 Volunteer Sack spent 6 weeks tracking down villages in Bokeo and Luang Namtha provinces where the Khmu still can make the bag. If girls cannot learn the craft from their mother, it is unlikely they ever learn. Soon the craft could die. Saving this ancient craft that dates back perhaps 5,000 years has become a primary goal of the Nature Bag Khmu/Lao Poverty Reduction Project. It is as important as sharing Earth’s Greenest Bag™ with our global community....
Volunteer Sack is on a 6 week trip through 3 Lao provinces to identify villages where the skill to make Earth’s Greenest Bag™ still exists. “I am trying to anticipate the need for increased bag production as global demand grows,” said Sack from Houay Xay, on the Lao/Thailand border. “My journey will take me into remote areas ordinarily accessible only to Khmu people,” he said. Already there was enormous pay-off during the first week when Sack located people who had worked with Khmu villages on producing handicrafts nearly 15 years ago. They were able to provide much information about distant villages so that he could plan his itinerary. “The timing of my trip is critical because many villages...
Be careful that your cloth bags actually are eco-friendly. Cotton bags (unless they are organic) have a much larger carbon footprint than "disposable" plastic because of the intensive agriculture and manufacturing they require. Even hemp bags, because they are made from cultivated hemp and usually in factories, have significant carbon footprints. The Nature Bag Khmu/Lao Poverty Reduction Project, sharing Earth's Greenest Bag globally, is truly eco-friendly because of its hand-harvested naturally-growing fiber, in-home crafting, long life cycle & minimal weight allowing delivery anywhere with almost no consumption of fossil-sourced energy. It's socially sustainable, too, being a tool for thousands of years for the ancient culture that makes it today to provide income without wasteful commuting & allowing traditional child nurturing. ...
