Eco-Friendly Shopping Bags: Not Necessarily Cheap

When we lived in Taiwan and Singapore we would head to the market with our cloth bags. We bought most of our fruits and vegetables from individual sellers who we returned to week after week once we discovered who was best for each item we were after. Our bags were nothing special. They had handles. They opened and when we put things in them they wouldn't break. These days there are more shopping bag options to consider.

Designers have gotten in on the eco-friendly grocery shopping option. A shopping bag might just be a shopping with a utilitarian use--or you could make a statement, and not necessarily just an "I'm environmentally friendly" one. There's an article by Lisa McLaughlin in this week's Time magazine that goes into several of the details about shopping bag politics (paper, plastic or canvas). The bag she mentioned as creating quite the ruckus is the Anya Hindmarch's version that says, "I'm NOT a Plastic bag." What struck me about the article's subject was how high end a shopping bag can get.

There's the Stella McCarthy $495 version and the Hermes $960 version. Or, if that's not quite rich enough, how about Louis Vuitton's for $1,720? If you're looking for something cheaper and you happen to be in Taiwan or Singapore, look for some sort of closely woven plastic sort of bag. I seem to remember a plaid sort of design. If you can find them, they work great and are cheap. I'm pretty sure we bought ours at the market. A famous designer did not make them, but hey, they'll get your vegetables and fruit home. Isn't that the point?

Filed under: Gear, Singapore, Taiwan