Paper Bag Day – 12th July
Paper Bag Day is celebrated on 12 July to celebrate environment-friendly paper bags as an alternative to harmful bags made of plastic. The day aims to raise consumer awareness about paper carrier bags as sustainable and efficient packaging that contribute to fighting climate change and environmental pollution.
Sustainable, forest-based packaging such as paper bags, reduces plastic waste and carbon emissions and makes a significant contribution to the circular economy. Carbon stored in wood fibers remains in paper bags and is not released during their life cycle. As research shows, forests are essential for people, wildlife, and climate. They act as a carbon sink and store CO2, which later remains in the paper bags made from the trees.
As wood is one of our primary raw materials, access to sustainable and responsibly managed sources is important to our business. In addition, using paper bags – a renewable and 100% recyclable solution – helps to mitigate climate change. Paper bags are made from wood, a natural and ever-growing resource.
History
The invention of the brown paper bag, as we know it, can be attributed to two people: Francis Wolle and Margaret E. Knight. Although commercial paper bags were first manufactured in Bristol, England, in 1844, Francis Wolle, an American clerk, and teacher invented the bag-making machine in 1852 in the United States.
Margaret E. Knight invented a device to cut, fold and paste paper bag bottoms, making her the mother of the modern-day grocery bag – even though it took her years to take credit for her work. Knight worked in a Massachusetts paper bag plant at the time when she thought how much easier it would be if the paper bags were flat – which they weren’t at the time. It inspired her to create a machine that automatically folded and glued paper bag bottoms, creating the flat-bottom paper bags we still use to this day.
Further advancements during the 1870s included glued paper sacks and the gusset design. After the turn of the century (1905), machinery was invented to automatically produce in-line printed paper bags.
Knight’s invention had a huge impact on the paper and packaging industry. To this day, thousands of machines based on Margaret Knight’s idea are still used to produce flat-bottom paper bags. And Knight? She went on inventing! Throughout her lifetime, she would receive over 20 patents and conceive almost 100 different inventions, such as a rotary engine and the shoe-cutting machine. It earned her the nickname “female Edison”.
Paper Bags are used for
- Shopping bags
- Grocery bags
- Produce bags
- Paper bread bags
- Yard waste
- Food waste
Let’s celebrate this day and make the environment better for our future.
Paper Bag Day Quotes
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With paper bags, the world is like a diamond which shines everywhere.
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The brown paper bag is the only thing civilized human beings have produced that does not seem out to be in place of nature. – Tom Robbins.
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If you are ‘Fantastic’ then do something ‘Drastic’ to cut the ‘Plastic’, use ‘Paper Bags’
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Be a gentleman use paper bag discard plastic bag.
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I think I’m right-brained, incapable of managing my way out of a brown paper bag. – Jeremy Grantham
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Go green with paper bags, everything is fantastic. Stop bagging the planet – say NO to plastic bags.
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Use cloth bags or paper bags
Avoid using plastic bags
Keep my
Earth polluted free
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Reduce, Refuse, Reuse, Recycle Plastic Bags, instead, Renew, Reuse and Recycle Paper Bags
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In some of our subcultures, paper bags are often used to carry intimate personal belongings. And the sight of some of our less fortunate citizens carrying their belongings in brown paper bags is too familiar to permit such crass biases to diminish the protection of privacy. – Author: David L. Bazelon
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I am attracted to generic or ‘industrial’ colors; paper bag brown, file cabinet gray, industrial green, that kind of thing. – Author: Robert Mangold
On Paper Bag Day take an oath and encourage everyone to use paper over plastic!
Suggested Read: Important Days In July
