... they came up with plastic bags because of ENVIRONMENTAL
concerns -- paper eats trees, eating trees is bad for the
environment, so let's use plastic and save the trees.

=v= This is not accurate. Certainly plastic bags were HYPED
as tree-saving, but enviromentalists at the time were opposed
to all disposables and suggested reusable canvas tote bags.
Which are still the solution.

=v= Certainly there was a vaguely-countercultural trend towards
anything hypermodern in the 1970s, which accepted pretty much
anything new and plastic, but that wasn't environmental at all.
_Jym_