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   Plastic bags are often made from polyethylene, which consists of long chains of ethylene monomers. Ethylene is derived from natural gas and petroleum.

Patent applications relating to the production of plastic shopping bags can be found dating back to the early 1950s in the US and Europe, but these refer to composite constructions with handles fixed to the bag in a secondary manufacturing process.

The lightweight shopping bag as we know it today is the invention of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin. He developed his idea for forming a simple one-piece bag by folding, welding and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic in the early 1960s for packaging company Celloplast of NorrkOping, Sweden. His idea 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 US petrochemicals group Mobil overturned the Celloplast US patent in 1977. The Dixie Bag Company of College Park, Georgia, owned and operated by Jack W. McBride ("The Bagman) was one of the first companies to exploit this new opportunity to bring convenient products to all major shopping stores. McBride's Dixie Bag Company, as well as Houston Poly Bag and Capitol Poly, was instrumental in manufacturing, marketing and perfecting this bag by the early 1980s. Kroger, an Atlanta-based company, agreed to try this innovation. So, the real change in grocery bags did not start until 1982, when the two of America's largest grocery companies Safeway and Kroger started replacing paper bags with more affordable plastic bags.

From the mid 1980s on, the use of plastic bags became common for carrying daily groceries from the store to our vehicles and finally to our homes. 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 centre of highly publicized battles.