Reusable Totes - The "Must-Have" Bag of the Season

Reusable bags are chic, and people are definitely nicer to you when you use them (it's true).  When I pull my bags out vendors often make it a point to thank me for recycling.  It's a little bit of warm-and-fuzzy-let's-all-go-hug-a-tree just for reusing a bag.  This is especially true at the farmer's market, woo boy do they like their green geeks.

I know, this post is sounding like your typical LA-LA native musing about spotting bigfoot, uh, I mean carbon handprints...or (insert Charlie Brown teacher voice here).  Let's call a spade a spade: Rob and I don't set the gold standard when it comes to recycling, not to mention the fact that when cooking a big meal I'm pretty much an environmental terrorist with the paper products.  The reusable subject came up in discussion a few weeks ago because the California State Assembly is considering a law regarding disposable bags.  We were talking about how stores might be able to incentivize shoppers to BYOB - more of a behavioral economics topic than anything else. 

This brings us around to the point of my post. I decided to be a good citizen and pick up some additional bags for all of our food shopping, but was turned off by the branding on the totes at our local store. If I am going to advertise for those folks then they should give me the bag for free!  Since the Wednesday SM Farmer's Market is a very big day in my life (seriously, friends wish me "Happy Farmer's Market Day") it made sense to find some fabulous totes to accessorize my baseball hat ensembles.  Channeling King Graham I decided to embark on a quest, a quest for awesome reusable bags.  As it turns out there are a number of companies that rock the reusable casbah.  I compiled a list during my journey and have shared the links below. 

Just think, if you're stylin' with one of these bags the person standing next to you will want to buy and use one too ... and then the bigfoot will get smaller!

UPDATE: Sadly the plastic bag ban failed in the CA Senate.  Congrats to the lobbyists.

Simple and Understated

Too Cool for School

Avant-garde

The Best of the Rest

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Special thanks to JaggedSmile for sharing his talent with us.  We will now ponder the kindness.