attention, shoppers; If things go as planned, the latest bag craze will rid the world of the tired debate: paper or plastic.

Byline: Sarah Mower

No loitering, girls. Today, let us go out and harness the power of fashion to change the way the nation shops. One stylish act of rebellion in supermarkets, delis, drugstores, and designer emporiums and at market stalls is all it takes: Say no to plastic bags. Whip out your own brilliant alternative. Make people stare. Break a habit. Set a trend.

It's high time for fashion-in the midst of the most bag-centric phase in its entire history-to stand up and be counted on this. The environmental movement has been working on shopping bags for years (see the excellent, Al Gore-endorsed reusablebags.com for proof), but lately, fashion seems to be so mesmerized by inventing ever more tricky hardware and trinkets for "icon" handbags that it's quite forgotten to think about how its potential owners also need to carry groceries. Whether we like it or not, women are the ones hauling the country's shopping home. This one is our departmental responsibility.

Change is a-coming, and the evidence is that fashion-conscious women are more than ready to force it through. Anya Hindmarch, Marni, Stella McCartney, Dosa, and Martin Margiela are some of the first in the vanguard of that realization. Ask Hindmarch, whose career as a smallish British handbag designer has been catapulted to world attention since she released a simple canvas limited-edition shopper-appliqued with the slogan i'm not a plastic bag-in the U.K. in February. "It's gone ballistic," she says. "I make no bones about the fact that I'm below par on the eco-front. I drive, I have five kids, and I fly. But I also go to the supermarket and see how plastic bags are so unneccesary, ugly, and wasteful. You can tax bags, or work to make them more recyclable, but neither is the perfect solution. The other way is to change behavior. To make it cool to shop with your own bag. My project is a billboard for that." Hindmarch's bags, which cost $15, will hit Whole Foods and Fred Segal this summer, as well as being taken up by stores in Canada and Japan.

The scale of that response should come as little surprise. Facts considered, the plastic-bag side of collateral shopping damage is horrendous. The vile, thin, rustly, branded things we unthinkingly collect in multiples while foraging for ourselves and our families (only to add to our pile of domestic recycling problems the instant we reach home) inflict unthinkable environmental harm. Annually, the United States disposes of 100 billion plastic shopping bags. In landfills, it can take up to 1,000 ...