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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's intention was to create a reusable lightweight bag that would reduce the ecological impact of paper bags that were rife in the 50's! Part1/5
Paper was the plastic of the day in the 50'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 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 4/5
Part 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
