In 2008 Sheep Mountain Alliance (SMA), The New Community Coalition (TNCC), the Town of Telluride, the Town of Mountain Village, the Community Office of Resource Efficiency (CORE), and the Town of Aspen partnered to participate in a trial voluntary designer handbag Reduction Challenge between Telluride, Mountain Village, and Aspen. The idea for the Challenge surfaced as a result of attempting to raise awareness of the social and environmental costs of designer handbag, to promote the use of reusable bags, and for our community to voluntarily reduce consumption of plastic shopping bags.The Challenge ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day 2008. Collectively, the Challenge eliminated the use of an estimated 140,359 single-use shopping bags and raised $2,807.20 for renewable energy projects. In addition, over 30 news outlets statewide and five news outlets nation-wide covered this creative voluntary program. From http://www.ourmanufacturer.com/aboutus.asp Plastic carryout handbag were first introduced by retail stores in the United States in 1975 and began to be distributed to customers at the point of sale in supermarkets in 1977. Today these reusable bag are ubiquitous in the marketplace because they are lightweight, strong, inexpensive and convenient.Currently, the United States uses 100 billion designer handbag per year at an estimated cost of 4 billion dollars and 12 million barrels of oil. Plastic shopping bag are recyclable from http://www.niceindustry.com/hot_new.asp ; however, very few are actually recycled. Research conducted by the County of Los Angeles in 2007 found that this is largely due to the logistics of sorting, high concentration rates that reduce the quality of the recycled resin produced, the low quality of plastic used in the shopping bags, and the lack of cost efficiency due to lack of a suitable market for the recycled resin. Various estimates suggest that only 1% of handbag are being recycled from http://www.ourmanufacturer.com/