Solar Powered Handbag; Tom Swift Nowhere In Sight

Ladies have a great tool to help them keep it together; the purse. If you had a mother like mine, the cavernous 70's purse held band-aids, knitting needles, hardened nubs of Kleenex... anything she might need any any possible time. Guys are supposed to fit everything they need into a wallet. There was a 70's attempt to offer men a stylish satchel with the unfortunate nickname "man bag", but happily this didn't stick around very long.

Fortunately the androgynous 90's brought us the messenger bag form factor, and now both men and women could carry around a decent day's worth of stuff. Mine is sort of like Felix the Cat's magic bag - an infinity of gadgets seem to topple out of it. Messenger bags are wonderful since today people expect to carry around their phones and palmtops and iPods and GPS and media players and every other kind of thing.  There's a fresh line of bags that can not only help you keep all that stuff straight, now you can recharge those gadget goodies on the go.

Noon Solar has bags for men and women made of environmentally friendly and responsible materials (even the dyes and behind-the-scenes manufacturing processes are green). The styles and colors are chic, but it's all about the solar panel. You can run your devices right off of the panel, or the panel can charge a lithium-ion pack that's right inside the bag. The bag itself is designed to readily biodegrade, while the panels and the hardware can be recovered for future projects.

The Noon Solar collection of bags
Amazon has solar bags that are less green, but also cost less green