In the 19th century, before the advent of large-scale retail, people typically purchased all their daily necessities from grocery stores near their workplaces or residences. These items, packed in wooden barrels, cloth bags, or wooden boxes, were transported in bulk to the grocery stores, and selling them to consumers in smaller quantities proved to be a headache. People could only go shopping carrying baskets or homemade burlap sacks. At that time, papermaking raw materials were still jute fiber and old linen scraps, of poor quality and scarce, even insufficient to meet the needs of newspaper printing. Around 1844, the German Friedrich Köhler invented wood pulp papermaking, greatly promoting the development of the paper industry and indirectly giving rise to the first commercial paper bag in history. In 1852, the American botanist Francis Waller invented the first paper bag making machine, which was subsequently promoted to France, Britain, and other European countries. Later, the advent of plywood paper bags and advancements in paper bag sewing technology led to the replacement of cotton bags, previously used for transporting large quantities of goods, with paper bags.
The first kraft paper shopping bag was invented in 1908 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. A local grocer, Walter Duvina, seeking to boost sales, began looking for ways to encourage customers to buy more at once. Duvina believed it should be a prefabricated bag-inexpensive, easy to use, and capable of supporting at least 75 pounds. After numerous experiments, he decided on kraft paper as the material. Kraft paper is made from pulp from long-fibered coniferous trees and undergoes a relatively mild chemical treatment with caustic soda and sodium sulfide during the cooking process. This minimizes the damage to the original strength of the wood fibers, resulting in paper with tightly bonded fibers, strong texture, and the ability to withstand significant tension and pressure without tearing. Four years later, the first kraft paper shopping bag was born. It had a rectangular bottom, offering a larger capacity than traditional V-bottom paper bags. A rope runs through its bottom and sides to increase its load-bearing capacity, and two pull loops at the top of the paper bag for easy carrying. Duvina named this shopping bag after himself and patented it in 1915. By then, annual sales of this shopping bag had exceeded one million units.