Reusable Market Bags and Designer Canvas Totes Replace Plastic Bags for Green Shoppers

Ask any French woman, and she will tell you that market bags are not only a necessity, but a fashion accessory. Reusable market bags are a hot item in the green crowd. More and more, shoppers bring their own bags to the grocery. Major grocery and retail chains sell their own brand of the reusable "green bag", which is originally from Australia.

An Etsy search for "market bag" or "canvas tote" will show you that crafters are getting into the market in a big way. A search for "free market bag patterns" will get over 240,000 hits, so that you can also make and sell the hottest item in town. Over 100,000 searches are made for "canvas tote" every month. Crafters everywhere are dressing up simple canvas tote bags for eager buyers, who are tired of the plain green reusable bags.

Model and activist Lauren Bush sells her FEED Project bags online at Amazon, and in Whole Food stores. Buying one of her reusable canvas tote bags benefits the U.N. World Food Program's feeding operation.

Designers are catching on to the trend, and starting to put their labels on fashionable market bags and canvas totes. Perhaps soon, carrying a designer canvas tote bag will be more popular than carrying a teacup sized dog. Who knows - celebrities may start carrying dogs in their designer market bags.

China recently banned plastic bags, an action that will save 37 million barrels of oil a year, and opening a gigantic market for reusable market bags and canvas totes. The Chinese were using 2 plastic bags for every 1 that Americans use. Always more ecologically conscious, Nordic countries have no bags in their stores at all.

Even one of the cheap reusable market bags holds the equivalent of 3-4 plastic bags. So if you can't afford designer market bags, just buy a few of those, and do your part in reducing the number of plastic bags clogging our landfills and killing our wildlife.

The question weighing on many of our minds in the U.S. is, why haven't we outlawed plastic bags? If you'd like to help toward this cause, write your congressional representatives and ask them to sponsor a bill banning plastic bags from all stores in the U.S. Do it for your children, and your grandchildren.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/china-plastic-bags-47010907

http://www.greendaily.com/2008/04/24/lauren-bush-has-created-feed-bags/

http://etsy.com

http://www.feedprojects.org/