Is it fashionable to be green? With plastic bags being banned in certain establishments in San Francisco, designers are stepping up and offering an alternative, reusable environmentally friendly shopping bags. These bags priced from as low as $1 and as high as $1200 are becoming the rage of the year, in fact people are standing in line waiting for Wholefoods to open to get their own designer bags by Anya Hindmarch. Labeled on the bag "I'm not a plastic bag" was priced at $15 but has been sold on ebay for as much as $800. Designers Stella McCartney, Castiglioni and Hermes also have created environmentally friendly shopping bags, priced at $495 (Stella McCartney, made from organic cotton canvas), $843 (Castiglioni) and $960 for a Hermes bag. It's obviously expensive to be green but there are cheaper options.

Since the ban on plastic in San Francisco, Fashion-Incubator held a contest on designing an environmentally friendly shopping bag. The very first entry was a t-shirt bag (for link see below) which can easily made by anyone who has an old t-shirt. There is also 'Trader Joe' for $1.99 as well as many grocery stores are offering their own bags for as little as $1. There may be a price to being green but I think the price is worth paying for, look at these plastic bag stats from the San Francisco Chronicle:

180 million: Roughly the number of plastic shopping bags distributed in San Francisco each year.

4 trillion to 5 trillion: Number of nondegradable plastic bags used worldwide annually.

430,000 gallons: Amount of oil needed to produce only 100 million nondegradable plastic bags

The point is you don't have to go broke to be fashionable and you can feel good about saving our environment too.

To see the t-shirt bag go to Fashion-Incubator

Saddie Muller created the DiggBags.com handbag search engine to help find people find resources on handbags.

Source: www.articlesphere.com