The rise of the 'eco' totes

We know who shot JR, and video killed the radio star - but who killed the hyper-expensive It-bag?

Ever since Fendi launched its tiny, impractical, Baguette in the late 1990s, fashion has been It-bag obsessed. Each season brought a new version: the Christian Dior Saddle, the Mulberry Roxanne, the WAGs' favourite Balenciaga Lariat, the Chloé Paddington, the Marc Jacobs Stam ... All were big, expensive and adorned with more locks and chains than Marley's ghost.

Then, late last year, with a "tag, you're It", came ... the Superdrug Prince's Trust. An ordinary cotton shopper, £2.99 from a high-street chemist, was suddenly what everyone wanted.

For this, as for so much fashion madness, we can blame Kate Moss. When the model was pictured carrying the charity bag in September 2006, Superdrug promptly sold out of its stock of 50,000 bags, which were designed by the Lancashire duo Kate Ball and Jenny Loram of the design team Dead on Arrival. The pair explain: "We were confident the bag would have instant appeal to Superdrug's customers, but its desirability factor was certainly raised by Kate Moss. The fact that all proceeds of sales went to charity was an added incentive to buy."

Had this been just a charitable anomaly, the fashion and retail world could have moved on to the next It-bag, which this season was expected to be Yves Saint Laurent's £840 Downtown. Instead, YSL's fortunes were scuppered by I'm Not a Plastic Bag.

This £5 beige cotton tote, a collaboration between the designer Anya Hindmarch, Sainsbury's and the environmental group We Are What We Do, sold out within minutes of the 8am release on 25 April. Of the 20,000 sold, several hundred could later be found on eBay for up to £200. "When an item is being sold for charity, it's not really in the spirit of the cause to exploit it," say the Dead on Arrival pair. "However, it's inevitable with auction sites like eBay, and at least the original selling price goes to charity." And at least the message gets out there: shoppers will be less keen to be seen with a plastic bag.

Affordability is key: this might be the only way to own an Anya Hindmarch design, which would usually retail for £500. Similarly, Antoni & Alison has designed a series of bags for the Sue Ryder charity, which sell for £9.99.

For most customers, the appeal of designer/high-street collaborations lies in the idea that the items are only available to those who can prove their dedication by queuing, rather than simply waltzing into a boutique waving a credit card. One designer bag, the Chloé Paddington padlock satchel, is so popular that the stockist Bergdorf states that "due to high demand, a customer may order no more than three units of this item every 30 days". For those who have £29,000 to spare, as many as 36 bags can be bought annually. Sainsbury's customers were limited to one bag each.

Loram and Ball agree that environmental concerns are a small part of the appeal: "Shoppers are probably more concerned with style, but it's a fantastic way to be more 'green' without realising it."

However, the I'm Not a Plastic Bags are actually even less "green" than customers realised: they were made in China, using cheap labour, from non-fair trade, non-organic cotton - a fabric as environmentally damaging as plastic. Petra Kjell, campaigner with the Environmental Justice Foundation, says: "Cotton accounts for 16 per cent of global insecticide releases - more than any other single crop. Of the $2bn of chemical pesticides used on cotton crops each year, at least $819m are considered toxic enough to be classified as hazardous by the World Health Organisation. Aldicarb is one of the most toxic pesticides applied to cotton, yet it is also the second-most used pesticide in global cotton production. One teaspoonful of aldicarb on the skin would be sufficient to kill an adult."

Sainsbury's issued a statement saying it had "never claimed the bag was fair trade or organic. The point of the bag is that it can be re-used, thereby saving millions of plastic bags from being used in future years. The bag was designed to raise awareness of the issue of the abusive use of disposable plastic bags, a goal which it has achieved internationally, beyond anyone's expectations". However, many shoppers reported that their I'm Not a Plastic Bag purchase was handed to them in... a plastic bag.

Loram and Ball attribute their bag's "fresh and youthful" design to the Biba-style prints of the last spring/summer season, whereas the average designer It-bag groans under the weight of its chains, leather and padlocks.

The next big high-street bag is the new Superdrug Prince's Trust, designed by Walé Adeyemi. Available from Tuesday for £4.99, in monochrome or emerald/fuchsia stripes, the bag sold out in online pre-sales in four hours.

"The key is great design," Loram and Ball insist. "If this is then endorsed by a celebrity the customer can relate to, like Drew Barrymore for New Look, and the price is realistic, you're on to a winner. The Prince's Trust is an excellent example of good high-street fashion: a guilt-free purchase that looks great, saves the environment, gives to charity and can go in the washing machine when it gets dirty."

So can we look forward to a new charity canvas shopper each season? The town of Modbury, in Devon, banned plastic bags from 1 May - and their limited edition of 2,000 official Modbury organic cotton shoppers are becoming collector's items. Dorothy Perkins and the Woodland Trust feature two totes bearing the slogan "Plant More Trees". At £10, the bags are cost twice the Sainsbury's offering, but their green credentials are twice as sound. Where I'm Not a Plastic Bag merely recouped production costs, £1.50 from each Dorothy Perkins bag goes direct to the Woodland Trust.

For his spring/summer 2007 Louis Vuitton collection, Marc Jacobs showed a red and white-check laminated laundry bag. At £1,400, it requires a rather greater financial outlay - but do limit yourself to three a month.

Prince's Trust bag by Walé Adeyemi, £4.99 from Superdrug (020-8684 7000; www.superdrug.com)

Plant More Trees bag, £10 from Dorothy Perkins (0845 121 4515, www.dorothyperkins.com)

Sue Ryder bags by Antoni & Alison, £9.99 (020-7400 0440)

Limited stocks of I'm Not a Plastic Bag will be available from www.wearewhatwedo.org this summer.

Dead on Arrival can be contacted via www.doafashiondesign.co.uk.

The perils of plastic bags

Why are they trouble?

The production of plastic bags causes pollution, and requires the use of non-renewable resources such as petroleum. Each of the estimated 10 billion plastic bags used every year by UK consumers will take between 400 and 1,000 years to decompose, perhaps suffocating a sea turtle or a baby bird in the meantime. Only one in 200 of them gets recycled. Most of us go through an average of 167 plastic bags each year.

What are the alternatives?

Paper bags decompose in a month, which sounds fantastic until you learn that plastic bags consume 40 per cent less energy to produce and generate 80 per cent less solid waste. It takes 90 per cent less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than to recycle a pound of paper.

Even "biodegradable" bags are unpopular with green campaigners - their production causes as much pollution as regular plastic, and mixing them with conventional plastic bags for recycling can render entire batches of recyclable plastic useless because of the sorting nightmare it entails. Campaigners recommend reusable bags made from hemp or organic cotton; neither requires harmful pollutants for production.

How can we solve the plastic bag problem?

Six months after a tax of 15 cents per plastic bag was introduced by the Irish government in 2002, their use had been cut by 90 per cent, and €3.5m had been raised to invest in environmental projects.

The authorities in San Francisco have gone one better, introducing a total ban on the use of plastic bags - the first of its kind in the USA. Businesses will be given a year to replace their plastic bags with eco-friendly compostable bags made of corn starch or recycled paper.

A recent agreement by UK retailers, including Tesco, M&S, Asda and Sainsbury's, is expected to cut the environmental impact of plastic bags by a quarter before 2009, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 58,500 tons a year - the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the road.

TIM WALKER

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