Go Green AND Be the Latest in Fashion

Come on. You knew it was inevitable. With all the celebrities involved. The obvious PR push to make environmentalism the latest and greatest. Well, now you can be "green" AND a hip, cool trend-setter at the same time.

According to this article which appeared in yesterday's New York Times, supermarket chain Whole Foods has started selling reusable, grocery bags designed by London handbag designer Anya Hindmarch. These bags, which sell for $15 and don the catchy phrase "I'm NOT a plastic bag," are being released in just 15 stores in the New York area (to create demand of course!) and they're already showing up on Ebay for as much as $300 a whack!! (Not to mention the near riot that occurred in Taiwan last month when shoppers stampeded in order to get their hands on one and sent 30 people to the hospital.)

Of course, the plastics industry is not happy about this. They say that it's not their plastic bags that are the problem (even though they can take up to 500 years to break down in a landfill and require millions of gallons of oil to produce) - it's people's behaviors. That's right. It's the public's fault as usual. The makers of plastic bags say that we need to recycle more, but I say that we need to start taking the 3 R's to heart and start focusing on reducing the amount of goods we consume and stop using recycling as the answer that makes everything OK. And because of that I think selling reusable grocery bags is a great idea which is why I wish I weren't so cynical about it.

See, I understand the need for making things fun and creating a buzz so that people tear themselves away from their televisions, computers, cell phones, etc. and take an interest in something other than themselves. I understand that we are facing a crisis as we try and figure out how to dispose of, without causing even more damage to our precious planet, the approximately 100 billion plastic bags we as Americans throw away each year (and recycle less than 1 percent of). I guess I'm just a bit of a romantic. I wish that people would take action, not because it's the "in" thing to do, after all fads fade away, but because it's the right thing to do; the necessary thing.

***This post also appears today over at the Soccer Mom Vote.