Sten Gustaf

American and European patent applications relating to the production of

plastic shopping bags can be found dating back to the early 1950s, but these
refer to composite constructions with handles fixed to the bag in a secondary
manufacturing process. The modern lightweight shopping bag is the invention
of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin.
[1]
In the early 1960s, Thulin
developed a method of forming a simple one-piece bag by folding, welding
and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic for the packaging company Celloplast
of Norrkping, Sweden. Thulin's design produced a simple, strong bag with a
high load-carrying capacity, and was patented worldwide by Celloplast in
1965.
Celloplast was a well-established producer of cellulose film and a pioneer in
plastics processing. The company's patent position gave it a virtual monopoly
on plastic shopping bag production, and the company set up manufacturing
plants across Europe and in the US. However, other companies saw the
attraction of the bag, too, and the US petrochemicalsgroup Mobil overturned
Celloplast's US patent in 1977.
The Dixie Bag Company of College Park, Georgia, owned and operated by
Jack W. McBride, was one of the first companies to exploit this new
opportunity to bring convenient products to all major shopping stores. The
Dixie Bag Company, along with similar firms such as Houston Poly Bag and
Capitol Poly, was instrumental in the manufacturing, marketing and perfecting
of plastic bags in the 1980s. Kroger, a Cincinnati-based grocery chain, began
to replace its paper shopping bags with plastic bags in 1982,
[6]
and was soon
followed by its rival, Safeway.
[6]

Without its plastic bag monopoly, Celloplast's business went into decline, and
the company was split up during the 1990s. The Norrkping site remains a
plastics production site, however, and is now the headquarters of Miljsck, a
manufacturer of waste sacks manufactured from recycled polyethylene.
[7]

From the mid-1980s onwards, plastic bags became common for carrying daily
groceries from the store to vehicles and homes throughout the developed
world. As plastic bags increasingly replaced paper bags, and as other plastic
materials and products replaced glass, metal, stone, timber and other
materials, a packaging materials war erupted, with plastic shopping bags at
the center of highly publicized disputes.
In the early 1960s, Thulin developed a method of forming a simple one-piece
bag by folding, welding and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic for the packaging
company Celloplast of Norrkping, Sweden. Thulin's design produced a
simple, strong bag with a high load-carrying capacity, and was patented
worldwide by Celloplast in 1965.