Paper bags are reusable
Experience shows that consumers reuse paper bags for different purposes or use them for their next shopping trips. The concept of reuse is defined in Directive 94/62/EC of 20 December 1994 on packaging and packaging waste:
“{A}ny operation by which packaging, which has been conceived and designed to accomplish within its life cycle a minimum number of trips or rotations, is refilled or used for the same purpose for which it was conceived, with or without the support of auxiliary products present on the market enabling the packaging to be refilled; such reused packaging will become packaging waste when no longer subject to reuse.”
The Papers Gallery Packaging, Transport & Logistics Research Center developed a method to assess the reusability of paper bags. The results of the validation show that, regardless of the type of handle, paper bags are reusable, both for textile and for other uses. They withstood several endurance tests which, depending on the paper bag reuse being validated, changed in terms of times and weight per bag.