Everyone has to buy things, be it groceries from the supermarket or the latest video game from the department store, at some point everyone is forced to carry their new purchase home. It doesn’t matter if you own a car or walk home from the market, at some point you will have to bring your newly purchased items into your house. Since it would be difficult and time-consuming to carry the goods by hand one by one, the modern shopping bag has been around for almost fifty years to satisfy this need. If you would like more info on other bags related topics and buy bags come visit us sehabags.
Shopping Bags
Despite the long time that shopping bags have been around, they haven’t improved much. In fact, most would say that in many ways they are worse than they used to be. There are three main types of shopping bags used today. Two types of disposable bags are commonly referred to as paper and plastic bags, both named after the material they are made from. The last type of bag, the reusable bag, can be made from a variety of materials, but is most often made from a sturdy material like cloth that can withstand repeated use.
Plastic and Paper Bags
All three bags have both advantages and disadvantages to their use. Paper bags are sturdier than most plastic bags and decompose much faster than the other types of bags after use in landfills. The disadvantage of paper bags is that in most cases they can only be held from the bottom, which makes carrying more than two or three bags at a time very difficult. Since the bags are made of paper, they also react poorly to wetness. This makes using paper bags to carry things that could leak or that are damp and icy a dangerous situation, as the bottom could fall out of the bag at any time. Rainy weather also does paper bags no favors.
Plastic bags have several advantages over paper bags. Compared to paper bags, they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and almost all of them have easy-to-handle handles, so the weight of your shopping is the only real limit to the number of bags you can carry. Plastic bags are also very water resistant, and even if they fail to keep moisture out of the bag, no amount of rain can cause the bag to burst.
The biggest disadvantage of plastic bags is that they are made of plastic, so they take a long time to degrade in landfills. There also seems to be a growing trend lately to make plastic bags weaker and thinner to save businesses a little money. Although a well-made plastic bag can actually be stronger than a paper bag, well-made plastic bags are rarely found in today’s stores.
Reusable Bags
The last common type of shopping bags are reusable bags. They are made from a variety of sturdy materials, from fabric to insulated film, but they all follow the same idea of a shopping bag that can be used over and over again. If everyone started using reusable shopping bags, many businesses would save a lot of money and many of the previous types of bags would no longer end up in landfills. Unfortunately, like all other bags, reusable bags have their drawbacks.
