Each July 12th, we recognize the significance of an invention that we take for granted on Paper Bag Day. Millions of people use paper bags every day. Readily recyclable, paper bags have been around for many years.
- American inventor, Francis Wolle, received credit for his patent of the first paper bag machine in 1852.
- Margaret E. Knight became known as “the mother of the grocery bag” after she designed the square, flat bottom and the machine that would fold and paste them in 1870.
- Plastic bags are made from petroleum. It’s something all of us know subconsciously, but you might be shocked to know just how MUCH we use to make plastic bags: an estimated 12 million barrels of oil used each year in the United States alone!
- A trillion plastic bags are used around the world each year.
- The average Australian uses 170 plastic bags every year. 150 million of these end up as litter, only 3% of them are currently being recycle and 200,000 bags are dumped in landfill every hour.
- In China, 3 billion single-use plastic bags are used every day.
- Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute.
- The average time that a plastic bag is used for is… twelve minutes.
- Around 14 grocery items can be held in a standard paper bag, whereas a plastic bag can only hold around 10.
- Plastic bags are recycled only 1% of the time, whereas Paper Bags are recycled 20% more than a standard poly bag.
- At the point when paper packs were first made, their size was measured by the amount of bags of sugar they could hold.
- Over 44% of all seabirds have ingested or become entangled in plastic
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