I'm NOT a Plastic Bag

I am not usually one to covet high end crap that you have to stand for days in line to get or else buy at a ridiculously high price on Ebay. Take the Iphone for example. It is cool; don't get me wrong. However, I don't need it SO BADLY that I am willing to wait for it for hours on end and then pay 500 dollars for it and THEN pay for a 2 year contract, Internet fees etc. All in all, time is money and money is money and that item, as cool as it is, is not worth that much money.

However, when I read about the "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" bag by Anya Hindmarch (who, by the way, I have never heard of, but apparently she makes high end designer bags) in Time Magazine, I said, "I WANT ONE OF THOSE!" The idea behind the bag is this:Too many plastic bags are being used in Grocery Stores etc around the world and not enough of them are being recycled. This bag, which retails for about 15 dollars is reusable and stylish and so would help eliminate unnecessary waste. In the US alone, an average family uses 1,460 plastic bags PER YEAR, which is about 88.5 billion bags total (in the US) and LESS THAN 1% of all plastic bags used get recycled.

So I got online to buy one. For 15 dollars you can't go wrong. Little did I know that I am not the only one who wants one of these bags. As it is a limited product, there were only a certain amount sold in the US, UK and China, and at this time, they are sold out. You can buy one on Ebay for about 40-50 dollars if you so please. In trying to find this bag, I also learned that the demand for these bags was so high that when they were launched in China, people got trampled.

So I wonder, are people buying these bags because they want to help the environment or because they are a low price point item from a normally high price point designer? I hope it is the former, but maybe it doesn't really matter. By buying the bag and wearing it, they are helping raise awareness around the world, which is equally as important.

A few stats, courtesy of Time Magazine(check out the entire article HERE): It takes up to 1,000 years for a plastic bag to decompose. 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the plastic bags that the U.S. consumes annually.

If you want the "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" bag, but can't get it, try one of these other charitable alternatives. Working with the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), Presidential niece and model Lauren Bush has designed the FEED Bag — a stylish but sturdy tote bag made of brown sacking and white canvas. The proceeds from the $60 bag go to the WFP, which provided a staggering 16 million children worldwide with school meals in 2006 as part of their efforts to feed the 300 million children around the world that suffer chronic hunger. And Intuition has launched the Market Bag to help educate children in need. For each $85-$100 bag sold, Intuition will donate $35 to the International Rescue Committee. The goal is to raise $175,000 for the IRC's education programs around the world.

And last but not least, if you don't want to spend upwards of 30 dollars on a canvas tote, try buying one from your local grocer, which usually costs about $2-$5. You can still make a difference, one bag at a time, as long as it's "not a plastic bag"!!