Solar Panel

Our solar panels are made in the USA, and are paper thin and flexible. They convert the sun's rays into power. This energy is stored in a lithium-ion battery box inside the bag. The energy can be used to charge your cell phone or iPod day or night. The box weighs six ounces.

Hemp/Cotton

We create our own high quality, naturally dyed, sustainably harvested, and biodegradable textiles because they are the only fabrics that satisfy our quality and design standards. We begin with untreated hemp and cotton canvas, and then use an ancient Japanese dying method called Shibori to create patterns and depth within the fabric's natural color. This method includes taking the cloth, hand-tying it with string and bands into gathered, bunched, and twisted forms. The cloth form is soaked in a natural dye bath for up to 3 days. When it is removed from the dye path, the stings and bands are removed, creating a pattern. Each bag is one-of-a-kind, and can never be the exactly the same.

Leather

When we began this project, we started making bags out of recycled vinyl. Although we were proud of using recycled products, vinyl is created using petroleum products and can take up to 500 years to biodegrade, all the while leaching chemicals into the ground. It was with this concern in mind that we chose to switch to using natural leathers. Our leathers are tanned the way people thousands of years ago would tan, with sustainably harvested materials like rhubarb and walnuts and without heavy metals such as chrome. This ensures the earth is not polluted when the leather is tanned, and ensures that the leather can biodegrade naturally. In addition, this process creates leather that is gorgeous, luscious, and amazingly soft to the touch.

Due to tremendous growth in global demand, most of the world's leather tanneries use sodium sulfate and chrome sulfate to speed the leather tanning and dying process. However, the use of these chemicals in leather tanning has contributed to very high levels of local water pollution throughout the world. In fact, many of the world's leather tanneries are located in countries that are loathe to regulate and ensure proper pollution controls. Unfortunately, the result of this trade off of commerce over health is leather products with high levels of toxicity (chromium is absorbed into the leather we use and wear) as well as highly contaminated drinking water for the local population surrounding the tanneries themselves.

It is for these reasons that Noon Solar uses only naturally tanned and vegetable dyed leathers sourced from the finest tanneries in Europe. Vegetable tanning is a more time intensive process which avoids the harsh environmental impacts that chemically tanned leather creates.

We encourage all to read more about the leather tanning process at these following links:

• Impact of Pollution Due to Tanneries on Groundwater Regime (PDF)
• Introduction of Low Pollution Processes in Leather Production (PDF)
• Adoption of Clean Leather-Tanning Technologies in Mexico (PDF)

Hardware

We use antiqued brass hardware that can be reclaimed and re-used for future bags.

Recycling

It is our future goal to create a recycling program with our bags. We hope that our customers will send their old Noon bags back to us so that we can reclaim hardware and the solar panel for future re-use lines of bags.