Hello, and welcome to my first post in my brand spanking new Sustainability Sundays blog. I'm Kaylan, one of the owners of The Getup.
Historically, I curated a series every Sunday on Instagram with one fact / topic in a text based grid post. It was very successful, if limited in its reach, and I enjoyed doing it, and received a lot of compliments on it. However, it was time consuming research every week to produce, I got busy with moving the business in 2024, and frankly, I ran out of ideas for that format in particular which is now kind of outdated anyway.
So here's to the new BLOG! Hooray! Although I'm calling it Sustainability Sundays simply to remind myself to try to do this on (most) Sundays, in reality, sustainability happens on the daily. I'll be posting here, on our Threads, Instagram, and TikTok (@thegetupvintage on all of those platforms) in whichever way makes sense for the issues / content at hand.
So lately I've been thinking about paper bags in the retail shop and what is the best way to go about doing it better.
First and foremost: we ditched Uline a while back in favor of female-founded and sustainable EcoEnclose.
A better way at the cash wrap beyond retail bags... would be to go bagless, however. I posed this question over on our Threads and the reception was that in 2025, everyone's all about going bagless & sustainability measures in their everyday lives. So, that settles it! From here on our, our retail staff will ask you some version of this at the checkout:
"We're going bagless in 2025 for sustainability! Do you have a bag already?"
And if you do, it's cool; and if not, I am going to repaint a bin I have to repurpose for a give one, take one bin of reusable bags. Isn't it just absolutely cuckoo to think about that I alone could supply a reusable bin bag at the shop for at least a month? And I am what I would consider to be a very sustainability-minded consumer! In fact, I'll try it out: I just went through my personal stash of reusable bags and filled an entire one for just this purpose. How long until I have to ask staff members / the general public to replenish it? I wonder.
And if can't carry your goods without a bag, or we've run out of reusable bags, the paper bags we do have are sustainably produced from a company whose values we support. I'm sure I'll miss the advertising of our name on retail bags but I'll check back in a few months time and let you know how many bags we've saved on / haven't purchased. I love a good experiment. This will be fun!
In the meanwhile - if you want to get rid of the bag stash under your kitchen sink, The Getup is here for you! Thanks for reading, and until next time -
Kaylan Mitchell / The Getup Vintage