If your house was like ours over the holidays, you were picking up a lot of wrapping paper. It makes me wonder how much money we all spend on this stuff to put around boxes. The answer, in America alone, is $2.6 billion. That’s a lot of money. And, that’s a lot of paper, much of which cannot be recycled.
I have written in the past how my dad would use newspaper for gift-wrapping, preferably the Sunday comics section. That makes perfect sense to me. A reader reached out to me to share how his father gave every gift in a brown paper bag. That also makes perfect sense. Paper bags are, after all, the perfect short-term containers with their flat bottoms, sturdy sides and pleats for easy folding. When I was a kid, we used them for book covers, costumes, kites and more. The Unknown Comic even made them popular on “The Gong Show” in the 1970s.
By 1982, many of America’s largest supermarket chains were switching from paper to plastic bags. By 1985, 75% of U.S. supermarkets were offering plastic bags to their customers. One would assume that costs played into this, but we were also in a time when anything made from paper was blamed for a shortage of trees while plastic seemed like it came straight from Mother Nature’s hands. Now, those plastic bags are seen hanging in the tree branches. Hmmm.
Margaret Knight, who worked for the Colombia Bag Factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the flat-bottomed paper grocery bag more than 150 years ago. Her job was to fold the paper bags by hand, which was horribly inefficient. This led Margaret to work on designs for a machine that would automate the manufacturing of the paper bags and modify them so they were flat on the bottom. After numerous revisions and lengthy and expensive court battles, Margaret was awarded a patent for her machine in 1871.
Margaret’s bag offered a wonderful solution for shoppers who were bringing their own containers to stores for transporting groceries home. Folks back then didn’t have the reusable bags that are so popular today, so the paper bags were welcomed, literally, with open arms.
The design of Margaret’s bag improved over the years, thanks mostly to Charles Stilwell’s design that added pleats to the sides, making folding and stacking easier. It became known as the S.O.S. bag, or “Self-Opening Sack.”
Meanwhile, for the most part, Margaret’s original bag is quite similar to the brown paper grocery bags still used today, albeit sparingly, in grocery stores — and in packaging a few gifts. That’s a little food for thought for you as you stuff all that wrapping paper in the garbage can this week.
Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707