22 Climate-Friendly Sustainable Tote Bags to Fit Your Life

A classic straw tote featuring removable scarf wrapped handles with a charming radicchio print. It’s the perfect tote to carry your weekly farmer’s market haul.

Kayu is an American brand that creates gorgeous, handcrafted boho sustainable bags for the modern free spirit. Each bag is crafted by women in the Philippines, who weave and embroider the bags by hand. Aside from looking out for its people, Kayu is also dedicated to preserving our planet. Its bags and hats are made from natural straw that has been harvested, stripped, and dyed by hand. This kind of straw fades with time, eventually biodegrading and returning to the earth. Note that the brand does use leather in some designs.

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Shop KAYU Pre-Owned @ Vestiaire Collective.

Big and beautiful, BEEN London’s oversized tote fits everything. With pockets galore and a padded laptop compartment, it puts Mary Poppins’ bag to shame.

BEEN London is a London-based brand turning waste into timeless accessories you’ll want to use every day. All its products are made of materials that have been something else in a previous life, including recycled leather offcuts and plastic bottles, diverting waste from landfills to help our environment heal.

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Shop BEEN London @ Staiy.

Shop BEEN London @ Cerqular.

The Blenheim tote is amazing: it’s made from the softest vegan leather, with gorgeous zebra faux fur inside. It is a work bag, gym bag, baby bag, travel bag, overnight bag, weekend bag—anything you want it to be.

Culthread is a UK-based clothing label that offers stylish, practical, and everlasting jackets and accessories from vegan and deadstock materials. Culthread’s goal is to make quality coats and lifestyle products that you will want to wear and treasure forever. Find most items in sizes XS to XL.

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A modern take on the classic tote bag. This one is made from an eco-friendly cactus vegan leather called Desserto and is just as beautiful as leather. Wear it as a shoulder bag with an added strap or as a giant feature clutch with an upper handle. Regardless of how you style it, this bag is sure to be a guilt-free addition to your closet.

A_C’s entire product range is vegan, and its use of eco-friendly materials limits the amount of chemicals, water, and wastewater used in production.

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GROUNDTRUTH’s durable and sustainable tote bags directly remove plastic waste from our planet’s ecosystem and are perfect for any shopping trip.

UK-based GROUNDTRUTH grew from three sisters’ shared belief in the power of collaboration and their drive to protect people and nurture the planet. Together, they saw the opportunity to design problem-solving travel goods that drive positive change: reducing plastic pollution and improving people’s lives.

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Sans Beast is an Australian accessories brand creating luxury vegan bags and accessories cruelty-free. Constructed from recycled Eco PU, the Library Tote is a perfectly petite tote with plenty of pockets and enough space for a kindle or tablet. It comes in colours noir and mahogany giving you effortless style that meets all your needs.

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The A.06 was made in A.BCH’s local factory in Coburg, a suburb in Melbourne’s inner north. They digitised the patterns, cut the raw organic cotton denim fabric with minimal waste, constructed the piece, pressed it, and trimmed it for excess threads.

A.BCH is a Melbourne-based, Australian-made fashion label for individuals who care about garment provenance. It utilises renewable, organic, and recycled materials.

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Ditch your plastic “eco” bag and be truly kind to the planet with Citizen Wolf’s famous Zero Waste Tote (2nd Edition). Each bag is a unique patchwork of fabric offcuts from the brand’s t-shirt production, paired with a lining cut from upcycled City of Sydney banners saved from landfill.

Citizen Wolf uses revolutionary technology to give you high-quality custom-fit t-shirts (and totes). After capturing your customisations, the brand hand makes each tee in Sydney from certified sustainable fabrics like cotton, hemp, and Merino wool milled in Melbourne.

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This cotton printed tote is perfect for grocery shopping or even to replace your regular bag.

Näz is a Portuguese fashion brand that aims to make fashion look good, not only on you but on the planet too. It uses a high proportion of eco-friendly materials, including GOTS certified organic cotton, and traces most of its supply chain.

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The 7 R’s Upcycled Tote is not your average tote. It was created to reduce waste using thick canvas dust bags from Rent the Runway, hand tie-dyed by The Defiant Optimists. It features a hand-illustrated patch by Olivia Sawai, printed by For Days, and sewn by HYER GOODS’ founder, Dana. This bag was created by a community on a mission to keep quality materials in circulation.

HYER GOODS is a NY-based leather goods label that curates handmade products, including handbags, wallets, and accessories. By upcycling “trash”, HYER GOODS eliminates the massive energy footprint needed in traditional leather production while simultaneously reducing the amount of waste being sent to landfill.

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For a classic woven tote roomy enough for beach days or flights, Vitamin A’s Tash Woven Tote is the way to go.

Made locally in California, Vitamin A’s collections of swimwear and loungewear use a high proportion of eco-friendly materials, including recycled nylon. The brand also uses a waterless process to print its designs, reducing its chemical and water usage. Find the pieces in sizes XS-XL.

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Penelope is Mashu’s XL, do-it-all sustainable tote bag. Featuring the brand’s signature wavy cut and framed by structured, square handles, this tote bag will stand out in the crowd for all the right reasons.

Mashu is a British sustainable and vegan accessories label specialising in handbags. Mashu’s environmental rating is “Good”, crafting its exterior with vegan leather alternatives while its interiors feature vegan suede made from recycled polyester, ensuring you never have to sacrifice your morals for style again.

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The roomy Lomi Tote is a sleek refresh on a classic tote with signature knotted straps and slip pockets, made of upcycled leather.

ABLE is a US-based clothing and accessories brands, that works with communities all over the world to make a meaningful impact, producing slow fashion that pays a living wage to women who have faced extraordinary circumstances.

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Ready to ditch the dirty? O My Bag is the brand for you. The Dutch label merges style and a responsible approach, creating vintage-inspired, rugged-chic sustainable tote bags made from sustainable materials, including high-quality, eco-friendly leather. Although some with animal welfare top of mind may favour a vegan leather approach, O My Bag believes that eco-friendly leather is the way to go.

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Shop O My Bag @ thegreenlabels.

Made from 100% recycled cotton canvas, The Common Good Company made the Everyday tote big enough to fit everything you might need during your day.

The Common Good Company produces clothing using recycled materials, proving that there is a better way to produce and a better way to consume.

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We love this sturdy sustainable tote bag with thick straps. It’s handmade in London for living wages by Fatheha, Malika, and women supported by the Stitches In Time community arts charity in East London. They receive £5.50 from each sale.

Birdsong is a boutique label producing gorgeous womenswear. Its clothes are handmade in London by knitters and sewists earning above the London living wage. The business is built on a philosophy of fairness and authenticity, promising customers “no sweatshop, no photoshop”.

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A bag that saves people’s lives? You got it. Parker Clay is an American-based brand looking to create a future without exploitation by bettering lives and communities in Ethiopia. The brand has partnered with Ellilta Women at Risk program, fighting to bring women out of prostitution by providing a more stable income and safe working environment. Parker Clay also helps preserve traditional Ethiopian techniques, materials, and styles, ensuring that this fast-growing country can remain close to its beautiful roots.

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Simple yet sleek, give your canvas book bag an upgrade with Raven + Lily’s Mulu Magazine Tote. With clean lines and minimal embellishment, this tote is beautifully understated.

Raven + Lily supports local female artisans to create handmade jewellery, bags, and homewares. This US brand’s eco-friendly products empower communities through fair wages, healthcare, and education.

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Shop Raven + Lily @ Cerqular.

Svala creates luxury designer vegan handbags, purses, bags, and totes. Each bag is handcrafted sustainably and ethically in LA with high-quality, premium vegan leather PU, cork, and Piñatex. We love that the Simma Tote is large enough to hold your daily essentials, including a 13” Macbook.

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If you love a great graphic print, Swedish label Dedicated has you covered. Dedicated is an ethical streetwear brand for men, women, and children. All cotton used in its pieces, including this sustainable tote bag, is 100% organic and primarily Fairtrade-certified, which means that you don’t have to sacrifice your ethics to dress in style.

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Shop Dedicated @ Earthkind.

Sturdy, organic, rugged, and durable, KAMPOS’s Stone Beige sustainable tote bag is the perfect complementary accessory for a day at the beach or on the ocean.

Kampos is an Italian luxury brand that believes in creating a world with integrity and conscience now and for future generations. The brand aims to raise awareness of overfishing and marine pollution and offers consumers unique pieces made of recycled plastic bottles, fishing nets and sustainable and organic fabrics.

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A pioneer of independent Australian design, Elk was founded in Melbourne in 2004. The brand creates bi-annual collections informed by a design ethos where simplicity and sustainability meet innovation.

The ideal size for everyday use, the Orsa Bag is crafted from soft cow leather, designed to look neat and clean. Like the one used in this deep tote bag, all leather at Elk is sourced from LWG tanneries. This association sets high industry standards and audits tanneries for environmental performance. Additionally, all products are passed by REACH standard regulations, meaning they are made with restricted levels of specific chemical substances in their goods.

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