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A plastic bag, poly bag, or pouch is a type of container made of thin, flexible, plastic film, nonwoven fabric, or plastic textile. Plastic bags are used for containing and transporting goods such as foods, produce, powders, ice, , , and waste. It is a common form of packaging.
In the late 1950s, Curt Lindquist, the CEO of the Celloplast company in Sweden, experimented with a new and promising material: plastic. By cutting and heat-sealing pieces together, he invented the first seamless plastic bag. The patent was awarded in 1965.Nils Johansson, "The Plastic Bag: From a Mundane Swedish Innovation to the World's Oceans" Environment and History (August 2025) , Vol. 31, No. 3: 293-299 Today most plastic bags are heat sealed at the seams, while some are bonded with adhesives or are stitched.
Many countries are introducing legislation to phase out lightweight plastic bags, because plastic never fully breaks down, causing everlasting pollution of plastics and environmental impacts. Every year, about 1 to 5 trillion plastic bags are used and discarded around the world. From point of sale to destination, plastic bags have a lifetime of 12 minutes. Approximately 320 bags per capita were used in 2014 in the United States.
Bags can be made with a variety of plastics films. Polyethylene (LDPE, LLDPE, etc.) is the most common. Other forms, including laminates and co-extrusions can be used when the physical properties are needed. Plastics to create single use bags are primarily made with Fossil fuel. International Plastic Bag Free Day is celebrated on July 3.
Plastic bags usually use less material than comparable to boxes, cartons, or jars, thus are often considered as "reduced or minimized packaging". In June 2009 Germany's Institute for Energy and Environmental Research concluded that oil-based plastics, especially if recycled, have a better life-cycle analysis than compostable plastics. They added that "The current bags made from have less favourable environmental impact profiles than the other materials examined" and that this is due to the process of raw-material production.
Depending on the construction, plastic bags can be suited for plastic recycling. They can be incinerated in appropriate facilities for waste-to-energy conversion. They are stable and benign in sanitary . If disposed of improperly, however, plastic bags can create unsightly litter and harm some types of wildlife. Plastic bags have low recycling rates due to lack of separation ability. Mixed material recycling causes contamination of the material. However, plastic bags are reused before discard at a rate of 1.6 times.
Bags come with various features such as carrying handles, hanging holes, tape attachments, and security features. Some bags are designed for easy opening and have reclosable press-to-seal zipper strips. This feature is commonly found in empty kitchen bags and some food packaging. Some bags are sealed for tamper-evident capability, including some where the press-to-reseal feature becomes accessible only when a perforated outer seal has torn away.
Boil-in-Bag are often used for sealed frozen foods, sometimes complete entrees. The bags are usually tough heat-sealed nylon or polyester to withstand the temperatures of boiling water. Some bags are porous or perforated to allow the hot water to contact the food: rice, noodles, etc. Grocery stores are the single largest supplier of single-use plastic bags.
Bag-in-box packaging is often used for liquids such as box wine and institutional sizes of other liquids.
From the mid-1980s onwards, plastic bags became common for carrying daily groceries from the store to vehicles and homes throughout the developed world. 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 center of highly publicized disputes.
In 1992, Sonoco of Hartsville, SC patented the "self-opening polyethylene bag stack". The main innovation of this redesign is that the removal of a bag from the rack opens the next bag in the stack.
A large number of cities and counties have banned the use of plastic bags by grocery stores or introduced a minimum charge. In September 2014, California became the first state to pass a law banning their use, but the ban contained what has since been called a loophole, allowing supermarkets to provide thicker plastic bags as "reusable" bags at a cost of 10 cents each. In 2024, California passed a new law, taking effect in 2026, which closes this loophole and reinforces the original ban. In India, the government has banned the use of plastic bags of a thickness below 50 . In 2018, Montreal, Canada, also banned plastic bags with Ottawa expected to also put the ban into effect.
When plastic shopping bags are not disposed of properly, they can end up in streams, which then lead them to end up in the open ocean. To mitigate marine plastic pollution from single-use shopping bags, many jurisdictions around the world have implemented bans or fees on the use of plastic bags.Xanthos, D., Walker, T. R. (2017). International policies to reduce plastic marine pollution from single-use plastics (plastic bags and microbeads): a review. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 118(1–2), 17–26. An estimated 300 million plastic bags end up in the Atlantic Ocean alone. The way in which the bags float in open water can resemble a jellyfish, posing significant dangers to marine mammals and Leatherback sea turtles, when they are eaten by mistake and enter the animals' digestive tracts. After ingestion, the plastic material can lead to premature death. Once death occurs and the animal body decomposes, the plastic reenters the environment, posing more potential problems.
Huge masses of plastic waste are arriving in the oceans per annum and causing several damages which include risk of marine species, disturbance in food web ultimately effecting marine ecosystem, several microbial and alien species colonize on plastic particles enhancing their harmfulness, and plastic particles driven by winds form garbage patches in various parts of the oceans.
Marine animals are not the only animals affected by improper plastic bag disposal. Sea birds, when hunting, sense for dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which is produced by algae. Plastic is a breeding ground for algae, so the sea birds mistakenly eat the bag rather than the fish that typically ingests algae. (National Geographic)
Plastic bags do not do well in the environment, but several government studies have found them to be an environmentally friendly carryout bag option. According to the Recyc-Quebec, a Canadian recycling agency, "The conventional plastic bag has several environmental and economic advantages. Thin and light, its production requires little material and energy. It also avoids the production and purchase of garbage/bin liner bags since it benefits from a high reuse rate when reused for this purpose (77.7%)." Government studies from Denmark and the United Kingdom, as well as a study from Clemson University, came to similar conclusions.
Even though the bags are plastic, they typically cannot be recycled in curbside recycling bins. The material frequently causes the equipment used at recycling plants to jam, thus having to pause the recycle machinery and slow down daily operations. However, plastic bags are 100% recyclable. To recycle them the user needs to drop them off at a location that accepts plastic film. Usually, this means taking them back to the grocery store or another major retail store.
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