Shoppers will soon have to pay for plastic carrier bags in Marks and Spencer's 14 Northern Ireland stores. Chief executive Stuart Rose said local customers would be the first to have to pay five pence for a plastic bag during a trial period beginning in July. Marks and Spencer's shoppers would be given a free "bag for life" in the month preceding the trial. The move comes as part of Marks and Spencer's drive towards ethical trading and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

Our Take: Following Ikea's recent announcement to charge for bags, another major retailer follows suit. Retailer initiatives like this, take a real stance on the plastic bag issue since they attempt to capture some of the hidden costs of "free" plastic bags and create incentives for customers to reduce their consumption.

Thousands of plastic bags are thrown away everyday in Pakistan, which results in choked drains, bacterial germinations, water borne diseases and the spread of mosquitoes. Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency Director General says the situation is "grim". "We need a mass awareness campaign and cooperation of the people to control the use of polythene bags."

Our Take: A reminder of the huge environmental and health problems that plastic bags can cause, especially in developing countries.

There's paper. There's plastic. Then there's the $960 reusable Hermes shopping bag. Originally designed for discerning Europeans, it hits America this summer, and if it sounds like an exotic fluke, consider the new $843 grocery tote by Italian designer Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni. Or the $495 organic cotton canvas shopper, due out in June from Stella McCartney. Or the now-famous I'm Not a Plastic bag by the British handbag designer Anya Hindmarch, which has been selling at more than ten times its $15 price on Ebay.

Our Take: Reusable bags are going mainstream and a little over the top... It's great to see fashionistas getting behind the cause, but let's dispel with eco- gimmicks and get real!

A supermarket in Edinburgh is to pilot a scheme of "green tills" allowing shoppers who are not using plastic carrier bags to get through the checkouts faster. The move is designed to promote the reuse and recycling of carrier bags - and to help the store assess how customers would react to a "bag-less supermarket" in future.

Our Take: Our Newsroom documents many of the creative ways that cities and stores are dealing with limiting the use of plastic bags. We thought Edinburgh's pilot project was interesting.

It's easy to find, in the mightily expanding iconography of American waste, the monumental (a ziggurat of flattened cars), the sinister (ocher sludge foaming on a riverbank) and the sublime (a plastic bag fluttering in a Japanese maple). The empty bottle and crushed aluminum can are none of these. They are almost too commonplace to notice, too dreary to evoke anything at all. Foundered on a roadside or slumped in a bag of spent Chinese takeout, the can without its Mountain Dew and the bottle without its Bud are unremarkable things. They're just trash: something we once wanted and now can't be bothered with.

Our Take: While the article focuses on use and toss plastic bottles, it addresses the over-consuming nature of our society that has accelerated dramatically in the last 20-30 yrs. The problems with plastic bottles mirrors the plastic bag issue.

For "green" shoppers, the right answer to "paper or plastic?" is now "neither." A pillar of the modern shopping world -- the bag, and the plastic bag in particular -- is under intense pressure nowadays. Using bags responsibly or getting rid of them entirely has become a new benchmark for green shopping.

Our Take: This article details the rise of the reusable shopping bag, "the trendiest choice in carryalls at the moment." Our own ReusableBags.com garnered a mention.