I have no idea how I missed this but last year the son of the guy who created the plastic bag came out to explain his dad& #39;s intention was to create a reusable lightweight bag that would reduce the ecological impact of paper bags that were rife in the 50& #39;s! Part1/5

Paper was the plastic of the day in the 50& #39;s, everyone was overusing and wasting paper bags, which meant lots of trees being cut down. So Sten Gustaf Thulin went about designing a bag that would be easy to fold up and carry around and REUSE many times. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/50094813">https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround... 2/5

So here again is a story of unintended consequences, or the reconfiguration of history, or good intentions leading to bad outcomes, or just another story of linear economic mindsets & mass consumerism creating big problems for the future. Or why we need to #postdisposable design

The story appears a bit more complex as Sten did however work for a plastics company at the time and was involved in the creation of the technology that enabled plastic to be blown into thin film, motivation to design a lightweight plastic bag https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/how-the-plastic-bag-became-so-popular/381065/
Part">https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog... 4/5

I absolutely love collecting these stories of recent design history that tells us just how nieve we can be about the things we create. If you have any more please share! #design #naratives #sustainability #makechange

But, like so many good intentions leading to not great outcomes, the very reasons it was a good design: lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to dispose of, made the plastic bag a very easy to thing to devalue and waste! To literally throw it away after just one use Part 3/5