Plastic bags were created to save the planet, inventor's son ...

Support truly
independent journalism

If you want to learn more, please visit our website.

Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.

Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.

Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.

Louise Thomas

Editor

Plastic bags were invented to save the planet, according to the son of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin who created them in .

The bags were developed as an alternative to paper bags, which were considered bad for the environment because they resulted in forests being chopped down.

They were significantly stronger than paper bags, which meant &#; in theory &#; they could be used over and over again.

However, single-use plastic took off and now our consumption of this polluting material is one of the biggest threats facing the world&#;s seas, with marine plastic set to outweigh fish by .

Raoul Thulin, son of Sten, told the BBC: &#;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 Seventies and Eighties, just naturally, because, well, why wouldn&#;t you?&#;

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

Show all 8

1

/ 8

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

This turtle was caught in a plastic six-pack ring when young and became deformed as it grew while still trapped in the ring

Missouri Department of Conservation

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

Sharks and turtles caught in a discarded plastic net

PA

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

A shortfin mako shark tangled in fishing rope. The rope has caused scoliosis of the back in the shark

PA

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

A hermit crab uses a plastic toy as a shell

Alamy

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

Found in September , a grey seal dubbed Mrs Frisbee was the first in a series of seals to be found off the Norfolk coast with frisbees around their necks

Friends of Horsey Seals

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

The third in a series of three grey seals found on a Norfolk beach with frisbees embedded in their necks

PA

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

The injury to the seal was so severe that it had to remain in the care of the RSPCA for three months

For more information, please visit Bage Machinery.

PA

Sea creatures seen tangled in plastic

A turtle found wrapped in plastic netting in Tenerife, Canary Islands

Eduardo Acevedo/UPY

Mr Thulin&#;s bags were patented by a company called Celloplast and by the mid-s they were replacing paper and cloth alternatives in Europe. By , plastic bags accounted for 80 per cent of Europe&#;s bag market.

In , two of the biggest supermarket chains in the US &#; Safeway and Kroger &#; switched to plastic bags and by the end of the decade they almost replaced paper bags around the whole world.

Plastic bags are now produced at a rate of one trillion a year, according to the UN.

While animals have been documented consuming or becoming entangled in plastics, the toxic effects the man-made substances have when they break down and end up inside marine organisms are still not clear.

Increasingly countries are looking to ban the bags.

In , Bangladesh became the first country in the world to do so and now more than two dozen countries have followed suit.

However, alternatives to plastic bags are not necessarily the greener option. Although opting for paper or cotton bags would reduce litter and waste, they have other significant environmental effects.

According to the UK Environment Agency, a paper bag has to be used three times to be as environmentally friendly as a plastic bag that is recycled.

Making paper bags uses more energy and water and they are also heavier, which makes them more expensive to transport.

Bags made of cotton &#; a crop which requires huge amounts of water to grow &#; need to be used at least 131 times to be as good as a recycled plastic bag.

Currently, the majority of plastic bags are not recycled and end up in landfill or polluting the environment where they take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

What Are Plastics and Where Do They Come From?

Plastic is a word that originally meant &#;pliable and easily shaped.&#; It only recently became a name for a category of materials called polymers. The word polymer means &#;of many parts,&#; and polymers are made of long chains of molecules. Polymers abound in nature. Cellulose, the material that makes up the cell walls of plants, is a very common natural polymer.

Over the last century and a half, humans have learned how to make synthetic polymers, sometimes using natural substances like cellulose, but more often using the plentiful carbon atoms provided by petroleum and other fossil fuels. Synthetic polymers are made up of long chains of atoms, arranged in repeating units, often much longer than those found in nature. It is the length of these chains and the patterns in which they are arrayed that make polymers strong, lightweight, and flexible. In other words, it&#;s what makes them so plastic.

These properties make synthetic polymers exceptionally useful, and since we learned how to create and manipulate them, polymers have become an essential part of our lives. Especially over the last 50 years, plastics have saturated our world and changed the way that we live.

The First Synthetic Plastic

The first synthetic polymer was invented in by John Wesley Hyatt, who was inspired by a New York firm&#;s offer of $10,000 for anyone who could provide a substitute for ivory. The growing popularity of billiards had put a strain on the supply of natural ivory obtained through the slaughter of wild elephants. By treating cellulose derived from cotton fiber with camphor, Hyatt discovered a plastic that could be crafted into a variety of shapes and made to imitate natural substances like tortoiseshell, horn, linen, and ivory.

This discovery was revolutionary. For the first time, human manufacturing was not constrained by the limits of nature. Nature only supplied so much wood, metal, stone, bone, tusk, and horn. But now humans could create new materials. This development helped not only people but also the environment. Advertisements praised celluloid as the savior of the elephant and the tortoise. Plastics could protect the natural world from the destructive forces of human need.

The creation of new materials also helped free people from the social and economic constraints imposed by the scarcity of natural resources. Inexpensive celluloid made material wealth more widespread and obtainable. And the plastics revolution was only getting started.

The Development of New Plastics

In Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic, meaning it contained no molecules found in nature. Baekeland had been searching for a synthetic substitute for shellac, a natural electrical insulator, to meet the needs of the rapidly electrifying United States. Bakelite was not only a good insulator; it was also durable, heat resistant, and, unlike celluloid, ideally suited for mechanical mass production. Marketed as &#;the material of a thousand uses,&#; Bakelite could be shaped or molded into almost anything, providing endless possibilities.

Hyatt&#;s and Baekeland&#;s successes led major chemical companies to invest in the research and development of new polymers, and new plastics soon joined celluloid and Bakelite. While Hyatt and Baekeland had been searching for materials with specific properties, the new research programs sought new plastics for their own sake and worried about finding uses for them later.

Plastics Come of Age

World War II necessitated a great expansion of the plastics industry in the United States, as industrial might proved as important to victory as military success. The need to preserve scarce natural resources made the production of synthetic alternatives a priority. Plastics provided those substitutes. Nylon, invented by Wallace Carothers in as a synthetic silk, was used during the war for parachutes, ropes, body armor, helmet liners, and more. Plexiglas provided an alternative to glass for aircraft windows. A Time magazine article noted that because of the war, &#;plastics have been turned to new uses and the adaptability of plastics demonstrated all over again.&#; [1] During World War II plastic production in the United States increased by 300%.

The surge in plastic production continued after the war ended. After experiencing the Great Depression and then World War II, Americans were ready to spend again, and much of what they bought was made of plastic. According to author Susan Freinkel, &#;In product after product, market after market, plastics challenged traditional materials and won, taking the place of steel in cars, paper and glass in packaging, and wood in furniture.&#; [2] The possibilities of plastics gave some observers an almost utopian vision of a future with abundant material wealth thanks to an inexpensive, safe, sanitary substance that could be shaped by humans to their every whim.

Growing Concerns About Plastics

The unblemished optimism about plastics didn&#;t last. In the postwar years, there was a shift in American perceptions as plastics were no longer seen as unambiguously positive. Plastic debris in the oceans was first observed in the s, a decade in which Americans became increasingly aware of environmental problems. Rachel Carson&#;s book, Silent Spring, exposed the dangers of chemical pesticides. In a major oil spill occurred off the California coast and the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, raising concerns about pollution. As awareness about environmental issues spread, the persistence of plastic waste began to trouble observers.

Plastic also gradually became a word used to describe that which was cheap, flimsy, or fake. In The Graduate, one of the top movies of , Dustin Hoffman&#;s character was urged by an older acquaintance to make a career in plastics. Audiences cringed along with Hoffman at what they saw as misplaced enthusiasm for an industry that, rather than being full of possibilities, was a symbol of cheap conformity and superficiality.

Plastic Problems: Waste and Health

Plastic&#;s reputation fell further in the s and s as anxiety about waste increased. Plastic became a special target because, while so many plastic products are disposable, plastic lasts forever in the environment. It was the plastics industry that offered recycling as a solution. In the s the plastics industry led an influential drive encouraging municipalities to collect and process recyclable materials as part of their waste-management systems. However, recycling is far from perfect, and most plastics still end up in landfills or in the environment. Grocery-store plastic bags have become a target for activists looking to ban one-use, disposable plastics, and several American cities have already passed bag bans. The ultimate symbol of the problem of plastic waste is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which has often been described as a swirl of plastic garbage the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean.

The reputation of plastics has suffered further thanks to a growing concern about the potential threat they pose to human health. These concerns focus on the additives (such as the much-discussed bisphenol A [BPA] and a class of chemicals called phthalates) that go into plastics during the manufacturing process, making them more flexible, durable, and transparent. Some scientists and members of the public are concerned about evidence that these chemicals leach out of plastics and into our food, water, and bodies. In very high doses these chemicals can disrupt the endocrine (or hormonal) system. Researchers worry particularly about the effects of these chemicals on children and what continued accumulation means for future generations.

The Future of Plastics

Despite growing mistrust, plastics are critical to modern life. Plastics made possible the development of computers, cell phones, and most of the lifesaving advances of modern medicine. Lightweight and good for insulation, plastics help save fossil fuels used in heating and in transportation. Perhaps most important, inexpensive plastics raised the standard of living and made material abundance more readily available. Without plastics, many possessions that we take for granted might be out of reach for all but the richest Americans. Replacing natural materials with plastic has made many of our possessions cheaper, lighter, safer, and stronger.

Since it&#;s clear that plastics have a valuable place in our lives, some scientists are attempting to make plastics safer and more sustainable. Some innovators are developing bioplastics, which are made from plant crops instead of fossil fuels, to create substances that are more environmentally friendly than conventional plastics. Others are working to make plastics that are truly biodegradable. Some innovators are searching for ways to make recycling more efficient, and they even hope to perfect a process that converts plastics back into the fossil fuels from which they were derived.

All of these innovators recognize that plastics are not perfect but that they are an important and necessary part of our future.

[1] Joseph L. Nicholson and George R. Leighton, &#;Plastics Come of Age,&#; Harper&#;s Magazine, August , p. 306.

[2] Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story (New York: Henry Holt, ), p. 4.

For more information, please visit plastic bag making machine.