SunCorp

The darndest things happen if you wait long enough. Take the matter of the reusable shopping bag. Sure, whatever goes around, comes around. Reusable shopping bags have long been with us. But not like this.

They are a really big deal now. The national grocery chain Whole Foods began selling good-looking cotton shopping bags by London designer Anya Hindmarch for $15 earlier this month. They carried the message: “I Am Not a Plastic Bag,” and in many stores the bags sold out in a matter of hours.

OK. OK. Maybe it was the cute, environmentally sensitive message that did the trick. Or maybe it was Hindmarch’s name. (Ordinarily her leather purses sell for $1,000 or so.)

Or, just maybe it was the fact that the bags came out in limited edition. It was a case of first come, first serve and only three bags per customer. And if you think that’s amazing, consider this: When the bags went on sale in Taiwan last June, they created a stampede. According to the New York Times, 30 people went to the hospital.

Of course, you don’t have to spend $15 or consult with your health insurance provider if you want to go the reusable shopping bag route. In Western New York the bags, made of differing designs and materials are readily available at Tops and Wegmans as well as smaller outlets for 99 cents and up. And buy as many as you like — the bags are being constantly reordered.

Meantime, the single use, biodegradable-resistant plastic bags are getting a really bad name even though SackingTheEnvironment.org founded by a group of University of Georgia students reports their use is at an all-time high. In the United States, people use 1 million of them every minute. (The same group reports that the average American family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the store.) And the Washington, D.C., Worldwatch Institute has reported that Americans annually discard 100 billion plastic bags. It requires about 12 million barrels of oil to make them.

No wonder measures to ban them are being considered all over the country. San Francisco already bans their use in large supermarkets and other stores. Meantime, the single-use bags festoon tree branches and vacant lots, and they interfere with marine life.

The bags are expensive, too. It’s estimated that each and every one costs from 1 to 3 cents;

Still, reusable bags present a problem. How do you get customers in the reusable shopping bag habit, to bring them back to the store every time they shop?

Maybe a magnet on the car dashboard. “Bags in Trunk,” it would read — like “Baby on Board” in more innocent days. How about selling strings to tie around fingers? Or even better — a bracelet like the colorful rubber ones espousing different causes that have become so popular through the years?

Cute, colorful, message bearing, fashion forward. Oh sure, maybe they might not cause a riot in Tapei.

But properly handled, the bracelets could become the next environmentally sensitive big deal. What say!