Apparently, Plastic Bags Were Invented To Save The Planet, But Then We Got Lazy
It comes as no surprise that plastic nowadays is seen as the planet’s number one enemy. Plastic is piling up at landfills, it has polluted rivers, seas and oceans and it has even made its way to our bodies as well. However, no matter how counterintuitive it may sound, plastic bags were actually created to save the planet. That’s what the son of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin who created them in 1959 says. Plastic bags were developed as an alternative to paper bags, whose production resulted in forests being chopped down. The new alternative proposed longer durability, which meant that they could be used over and over again – many more times than a paper bag could handle.
Originally, plastic bags were created to help save the planet
Image credits: dcaloren
However, we just became lazy. Instead of using and re-using the same bag over and over again, we got used to getting rid of them. Last year, National Geographic has reported that somewhere around 40 percent of plastic produced is packaging – which is used just once and then discarded. The son of the inventor of plastic bags told the media: “To my dad, the idea that people would simply throw these away would be bizarre. He always carried [a plastic bag] in his pocket folded up. You know what we’re all being encouraged to do today, which is to take your bags back to the shop, he was doing back in the ’70s and ’80s, just naturally, because, well, why wouldn’t you?”
Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin created them back in 1959
Image credits: jericlcat
Plastic bags were patented by a company called Celloplast and by the middle of the 1960s, they were actively replacing paper and cloth alternatives in Europe. Fast forward to 1979, plastic bags already accounted for 80 percent of Europe’s bag market. At the beginning of the 1980s, two of the biggest US supermarket chains – Kroger and Safeway – switched to plastic bags. By the end of the 1980s, plastic bags replaced paper ones around the whole world.
They were supposed to be re-used numerous times, unfortunately, that isn’t the case
Image credits: Alan Denney
According to the same report by National Geographic, in 2018, shoppers in the United States used almost one plastic bag per resident per day, whereas shoppers in Denmark used an average of four plastic bags a year. Whereas according to the UN, plastic bags are now produced at a rate of one trillion a year! Therefore, many countries are now banning plastic bags, with Bangladesh being the first one having banned them back in 2002. Since then, more than two dozen countries have followed suit. However, one of the biggest problems is that the majority of plastic bags are not recycled and end up in landfills, where they take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
However, experts say that a plastic bag can be a greener alternative than a paper or cotton one
Image credits: rakka
However, according to experts, alternatives to plastic bags are not necessarily more environmentally friendly. While opting for paper and cotton bags would technically reduce waste, they have other important environmental effects. UK Environment Agency suggests that a paper bag has to be used at least three times to be as “green” as a plastic bag that is being recycled. This is because producing paper bags requires more energy and water while they’re also heavier than plastic bags, which makes them more expensive to transport. As for cotton bags – they need to be used at least 131 times to be as environmentally friendly as plastic bags.
Watch the video with the interview with Raoul Thulin below
People online had really mixed opinions about it
Johnny really hit the nail on the head – the greenest way of all ways is to learn to re-use what you already have instead of buying new bags.
27Kviews
Share on FacebookY'all remember when paper bags were phased out to save the trees? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Trees can be and are farmed and harvested like any other plant, the sentence "save the trees" is referred to the deforestation made mainly to make place to farm fodder.
It takes years for a tree to grow big, though there are some fast growing trees usually they are not as good as old tree. So most companies would rather buy wood from forest, usually with local goverment "help"
Load More Replies...Using the studies reporting that plastic bags are "better for the environment" than paper or fabric is disingenuous. Those studies were designed to focus on only the footprint of creating each item and not their impact on the environment when disposed of. You cannot take only one part of the cycle and say one is better than the other. The overall impact matters. Those studies are a good metric for only a certain part of the whole picture and they're only good information if you use them as they were intended.
My city charges for plastic bags. I also save my plastic bread bags and fruit bags to take to the grocery store where I work. The have a big barrel where you can put your plastic, then they take it and turn it into that permanent plastic 'wood' that people can build decks with etc.
I wish my city charges for plastic bags. They ONLY offer paper for a large fee. It sucks when you are out and about away from home without a vehicle and you just want to pop in a store on a whim. I'm not carrying around a full reusable bag in my jeans on the off chance I might have an urge for a bunch of bananas on the way home.
Load More Replies...I'm so confused now...! ALL my life I was told, use paper, it is better for the environment... I'm not even sure what to think
The Sierra Club magazine recently did a really good article on "Recycling is broken and how to fix it" - it may be useful if you can find a copy or if it's on their website.
Load More Replies...I hate it when "experts" say plastic CAN be greener than cotton. I have had the same cotton shopping bag for years which I use every day. When the handle broke, I sewed it on. When it becomes dirty, I can wash it in the washing machine. That is sustainable. The misleading title saying that plastic CAN be greener, doesnt mean it is! But people who read just titles will think plastic is a good choice. Just cause it uses less water to make, doesnt mean it is better in the long run. Cause how often are those bag used? How easily do they break and are they repairable? What happens when they are discarded? So production of a plastic bag can be greener, can be yes, but in total it is.
btw, this only applies if the user uses the product responsible of course. If you buy 20 different cotton bags and dont use them, youre still not helping.
Load More Replies...THANK YOU! I'm super impressed you guys are presenting the other side to this story. Paper bags, in addition to being heavier are also orders of magnitude larger so that adds to the total volume of shipments as well. It's not a super easy, cut and dried, one good/one evil topic. There's so much more to it.
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Even before they started chrarging our plastic bags, we would keep them for other purposes, we even have the joke how only in Balkans you can find a plastic bag full of plastic bags. Trash, storing things, carrying things around, you name it. I still find it ridiculous that I am supposed to buy plastic bags that are solely used as garbage bags. They say "you discard plastic bags and it is bad for the envjronment", of course I'll discard it when they are of such low quality now that they barely last until I get to the house. It was a good and thoughtful invention, but bad mentality made it worse.
Honestly people should just be carrying a bag in general- and if you're getting something small skip the bag. Other option a few stores around here use is instead of crushing all the boxes merchandise goes into you put the empty boxes at the front of the store for people to take their stuff home in. Sometimes you get really nice boxes that way too.
When I went to Europe 20 years ago, you always paid for plastic bags, so people reused them over & over. When i was a kid, we always used the paper shopping bags in the kitchen bin. These days I still save all nice carrier bags & use them as gift bags or to carry things back & forth to school. We've jus become lazy, we need to be more thoughtful of everything we use. Recycle, remake, reuse, upcycle, repair, repurpose.
This post conveniently forgets that 100% of clean paper is recyclable. Not all plastic is recyclable, and not all recyclable plastic is recycled. Plastic is a plague on the planet.
Ah yes, Save The Trees. A valiant idea. Hard to reuse a bag that has torn before you even get home. Does Europe get different, stronger bags than US?
You missed out on one aspect: for a long time stores did not allow other bags than theirs to be used, in order to prevent theft. And by giving us a bag with their logo on it, they could advertise without it costing too much. I reuse plastic bags for trash bins and dirty and wet clothing or shows. What will I do when I can't use my plastic grocery bags as trash bags? I'll have to buy new bags from the grocery store?
If all governments just banned the production of new plastic all the old plastic would have a commercial value that would then monetize recycling, creating a market of fishing then out of the ocean not landfilling or incinerating them. The solution is so simple. Not no will.
We still have plastic bags here but I never throw them away, I reuse them until they break, then recycle. We are also slowly introducing recycled/eco friendly bags in stores, they look like plastic but they're ok, they smell a bit weird. edit: plastic bags are not free, the recycled ones are more expensive but it's a transition until there won't be plastic bags anymore.
I'm confused, I don't understand how anyone could say a fabric bag is less environmentally friendly than a plastic bag. "They need to be used 131 times", yeah, and? You can easily use the same fabric bag for years, plastic bags get torn up so much quicker. It's been a little over four years since I started carrying a bunch of fabric bags every time I go to the store (and I keep one in my purse all the time), I haven't needed to buy any other kind of bag since and I haven't had one become unusable yet.
Checkouts at grocery stores seem to get paid by how many bags they can give you. You can have 15 items and leave with 15 bags if you let them. If you tell them to dump it all in one bag they get all defensive.
Y'all remember when paper bags were phased out to save the trees? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Trees can be and are farmed and harvested like any other plant, the sentence "save the trees" is referred to the deforestation made mainly to make place to farm fodder.
It takes years for a tree to grow big, though there are some fast growing trees usually they are not as good as old tree. So most companies would rather buy wood from forest, usually with local goverment "help"
Load More Replies...Using the studies reporting that plastic bags are "better for the environment" than paper or fabric is disingenuous. Those studies were designed to focus on only the footprint of creating each item and not their impact on the environment when disposed of. You cannot take only one part of the cycle and say one is better than the other. The overall impact matters. Those studies are a good metric for only a certain part of the whole picture and they're only good information if you use them as they were intended.
My city charges for plastic bags. I also save my plastic bread bags and fruit bags to take to the grocery store where I work. The have a big barrel where you can put your plastic, then they take it and turn it into that permanent plastic 'wood' that people can build decks with etc.
I wish my city charges for plastic bags. They ONLY offer paper for a large fee. It sucks when you are out and about away from home without a vehicle and you just want to pop in a store on a whim. I'm not carrying around a full reusable bag in my jeans on the off chance I might have an urge for a bunch of bananas on the way home.
Load More Replies...I'm so confused now...! ALL my life I was told, use paper, it is better for the environment... I'm not even sure what to think
The Sierra Club magazine recently did a really good article on "Recycling is broken and how to fix it" - it may be useful if you can find a copy or if it's on their website.
Load More Replies...I hate it when "experts" say plastic CAN be greener than cotton. I have had the same cotton shopping bag for years which I use every day. When the handle broke, I sewed it on. When it becomes dirty, I can wash it in the washing machine. That is sustainable. The misleading title saying that plastic CAN be greener, doesnt mean it is! But people who read just titles will think plastic is a good choice. Just cause it uses less water to make, doesnt mean it is better in the long run. Cause how often are those bag used? How easily do they break and are they repairable? What happens when they are discarded? So production of a plastic bag can be greener, can be yes, but in total it is.
btw, this only applies if the user uses the product responsible of course. If you buy 20 different cotton bags and dont use them, youre still not helping.
Load More Replies...THANK YOU! I'm super impressed you guys are presenting the other side to this story. Paper bags, in addition to being heavier are also orders of magnitude larger so that adds to the total volume of shipments as well. It's not a super easy, cut and dried, one good/one evil topic. There's so much more to it.
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Even before they started chrarging our plastic bags, we would keep them for other purposes, we even have the joke how only in Balkans you can find a plastic bag full of plastic bags. Trash, storing things, carrying things around, you name it. I still find it ridiculous that I am supposed to buy plastic bags that are solely used as garbage bags. They say "you discard plastic bags and it is bad for the envjronment", of course I'll discard it when they are of such low quality now that they barely last until I get to the house. It was a good and thoughtful invention, but bad mentality made it worse.
Honestly people should just be carrying a bag in general- and if you're getting something small skip the bag. Other option a few stores around here use is instead of crushing all the boxes merchandise goes into you put the empty boxes at the front of the store for people to take their stuff home in. Sometimes you get really nice boxes that way too.
When I went to Europe 20 years ago, you always paid for plastic bags, so people reused them over & over. When i was a kid, we always used the paper shopping bags in the kitchen bin. These days I still save all nice carrier bags & use them as gift bags or to carry things back & forth to school. We've jus become lazy, we need to be more thoughtful of everything we use. Recycle, remake, reuse, upcycle, repair, repurpose.
This post conveniently forgets that 100% of clean paper is recyclable. Not all plastic is recyclable, and not all recyclable plastic is recycled. Plastic is a plague on the planet.
Ah yes, Save The Trees. A valiant idea. Hard to reuse a bag that has torn before you even get home. Does Europe get different, stronger bags than US?
You missed out on one aspect: for a long time stores did not allow other bags than theirs to be used, in order to prevent theft. And by giving us a bag with their logo on it, they could advertise without it costing too much. I reuse plastic bags for trash bins and dirty and wet clothing or shows. What will I do when I can't use my plastic grocery bags as trash bags? I'll have to buy new bags from the grocery store?
If all governments just banned the production of new plastic all the old plastic would have a commercial value that would then monetize recycling, creating a market of fishing then out of the ocean not landfilling or incinerating them. The solution is so simple. Not no will.
We still have plastic bags here but I never throw them away, I reuse them until they break, then recycle. We are also slowly introducing recycled/eco friendly bags in stores, they look like plastic but they're ok, they smell a bit weird. edit: plastic bags are not free, the recycled ones are more expensive but it's a transition until there won't be plastic bags anymore.
I'm confused, I don't understand how anyone could say a fabric bag is less environmentally friendly than a plastic bag. "They need to be used 131 times", yeah, and? You can easily use the same fabric bag for years, plastic bags get torn up so much quicker. It's been a little over four years since I started carrying a bunch of fabric bags every time I go to the store (and I keep one in my purse all the time), I haven't needed to buy any other kind of bag since and I haven't had one become unusable yet.
Checkouts at grocery stores seem to get paid by how many bags they can give you. You can have 15 items and leave with 15 bags if you let them. If you tell them to dump it all in one bag they get all defensive.
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