If you open your kitchen cabinet, chances are that a mini avalanche of brown paper bags will tumble down. Blinkit, Instamart, Big Basket, Zepto, every delivery means one more bag added to the mountain. What once felt eco-friendly compared to plastic has now turned into a nuisance and a problem of plenty. The paper pile keeps growing, and nobody knows what to do with it.
Quick commerce and the bag boom
Quick commerce has transformed the way we shop. Need a packet of chips? Ten minutes. Ran out of detergent? Fifteen minutes. Out of nowhere, a paper bag lands at your doorstep. Multiply that by daily groceries, snacks and monthly refills, and you suddenly own more bags than you have space for. The problem is not that they are useless. The problem is that we rarely think of reusing them in creative ways.
Turning nuisance into utility
One simple trick is to turn these bags into garbage holders for dry waste. They are sturdy enough to carry peels, wrappers or old bills. Some even double them up as outer covers for plastic trash bags, making disposal neater and more manageable. It is a quick solution that keeps the stack under control.
Creative hacks at home
Subhadip Das’s homemade roll wrapped in a Blinkit envelope
Then, there are the inventive ways people have discovered to put these bags to use. One foodie confessed to wrapping a homemade egg roll in a Blinkit envelope. IHM Kolkata faculty Subhadip Saha said, “I use them as garbage bags mainly, but once I used a blinkit envelope to wrap a homemade egg roll.” It held just fine and added a quirky twist to street-style cooking at home.
Others use the bags for gift wrapping. Add a handwritten note or doodle on top, and the bag instantly becomes a personalised, rustic-looking gift cover. The sleeve-style bags that often arrive with books or fragile items are perfect for gifting books to friends.
Travel hacks have also emerged. Some people pack clothes and accessories into these bags while arranging luggage. Chef and lawyer Dyuti Banerjee said, “I have used them as nifty bags for gifts. A nice handwritten note on top makes a great difference too. And nowadays they also give brown paper sleeve bags, those are perfect to gift books. I have also used them to pack clothes and other things in my luggage, to keep things organised.”
Recycling the smart way
Of course, recycling through neighbourhood kabadiwalas is another responsible way forward. They pay by weight, though the rates are modest. Foodpreneur and chef Prithvish Chakravarti said, “The unorganised recycling sector does a pretty great job. Sell or give away to your neighborhood kabadiwallah. While selling off my unused pizza boxes, I got paid 100/kilo. You'll probably get about Rs 8-10/kilo only for brown paper. The money doesn't matter, what matters is that it goes into the right channel.”
Dishari Chakraborty, a guest lecturer at a city college, came across Shreya Das’s post of making notebooks, sharing the link, she said, “Came across this post a few days ago, where the person recycled the paper bags to make notebooks.cI quite liked this idea.”
What about plastic packaging?
Unlike quick commerce, e-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra often deliver products in plastic packaging. These bags are usually made of recyclable plastic, but the catch is that they must be sent to the right collection centres. Many cities now have dedicated drop-off points for plastic bags at supermarkets, resident complexes or recycling kiosks. You can also hand them over to scrap dealers who accept plastics separately. Some companies encourage customers to return packaging during the next delivery. You can also sell them off to small business owners on the app FreeUp, who reuse them to pack their products.