Canby.co.uk is an eco-friendly shopping bag company in Oxford
Title
Canby: UK suppliers of eco-friendly jute bags
Description
Many useful everyday products are derived from plants. Paper is probably the most successful example, derived from wood pulp. In the world of textiles, perhaps cotton and flax (linen) are the best-known, but you also might be familiar with hemp. Tougher products (used for floor coverings and furnishings) include coir and seagrass. Baskets can be made of many grasses and reeds; the cork in a wine bottle comes from a tree.
Jute is another such natural fibre. It's a tropical cousin of the European lime or linden tree and its official latin name is Corchorus capsularis or Corchorus olitorius.
Jute is cultivated on small farms using traditional methods in the Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys of Bangladesh and India. The plants, which grow up to 12 ft (3.6m) tall, have a layer of fibre (called sclerenchyma) in their woody stems. It has delicate green leaves and little yellow flowers that are pollinated by insects.
