Our plastic monuments to a disposable culture

A levy has curbed the Irish public’s consumption of plastic bags but 1m are given out every minute worldwide, writes Dan Buckley.

FROM the ‘50s to the Noughties, they became the ultimate symbol and the most unsightly evidence of our modern disposable culture. Far from the days when Granny carried her net-string bag to “get the messages”, the production of billions of cheap plastic bags meant that shopping no longer had to be planned and impulse purchases were popped with increasing regularity into disposable bags.

Countless numbers have been produced since disposable plastic carrier bags first saw the light of day in the US in 1957, but what began as a convenience for shoppers has become a global environmental inconvenience.