So what did we do before plastic bags?

During overnight stays and holidays, it hygienically contains dirty washing. Throughout the average British summer, it transforms into an instant waterproof rain-hat. Turned inside-out and worn over the hand by responsible dog-owners, it becomes a sanitary poop-scoop.

Yet the all-pervading ubiquity of this everyday help-mate is matched by appalling levels of consumer ignorance about it, resulting in a host of unasked plastic carrier bag questions.

Unconsidered questions such as ''What kind of plastic is your average plastic carrier bag made from?'' Additionally, there's a major ecological poser: ''Is the plastic carrier bag truly an un-recyclable environmental hazard?''

More flippantly, there's the question of whether it's more fashionable to be seen hiding one's soiled gym-shorts inside one branded carrier bag or another -and woe betide the parent who sends his brand-brainwashed child to school with a play-piece wrapped in the wrong trademark.

Above all, there's the burning question: ''Whatever did we all do before the plastic carrier bag was invented?''

There's no real question about who makes most of them, though. These days, apparently, it's more economical for British suppliers to import plastic bags from China - 20 million of them a week at present levels. Others come from Taiwan, Indonesia, and Korea. Misprinted seconds have therefore been widely discovered throughout the Third World, advertising the benefits of Sinsbury's (sic) as well as record shops in Dumbraton Road, Glasgo (sic, sic).

Our appetite for the things is insatiable. UK supermarket shoppers currently use eight billion plastic carrier bags per annum, or 134 for every Brit. Unfolded, the average bag measures 80cm by 35cm, with a year's worth accordingly having been estimated to cover an area of 224,000 hectares.

Many's the depressingly grey Scottish town which could thus be entirely sheathed in colourful logo-embossed plastic, much to everyone's benefit. Instead, we simply tend to hoard our plastic carrier bags at home in giant balls. Bags stuffed within bags, overflowing inside at least one drawer in every kitchen cupboard throughout the land, a bulging enigma within a rustling riddle inside a creased conundrum.

Bag-hoarding is a national pastime, handed down from one generation to another. Yet what did we do before the dawning of the age of the plastic carrier bag? Britain's ancients well remember, nostalgic for a far-off shopping era when every purchase came neatly wrapped in paper, held together by properly knotted string.

Fact! In the UK retail trade's golden pre-plastic age, circa 1931, every department store's biggest department was its paper-wrapping and string-knotting department, boasting a skilled staff of thousands.

Fact! The brows of butchers' teenage assistants were a ready source of grease-proofed paper. But alas, these poor unsuspecting devils were to find that their shop assistants' prowess with paper and string could not contain Europe's looming storm clouds of war.

Shortly afterwards, the original wrappers all marched off to fight for king and country, hellishly encumbered by gas-mask holders, trouble-filled old kit-bags, clanking canteens, duffel bags, bandoliers, annoying knapsacks, epaulettes and chafing ammo-belts. Trench-foot: no plastic bags at the Somme.

Whether grease-proofed or brown, paper back then became a vital resource in short supply on the home front, to be conserved and re-used. Throw away paper? There's a war on! Paper doesn't grow on trees, you know!

And as for the string! It was much prized before the invention of television, constituting an entertainment form in itself.

Likewise, who among us can forget the magical, ever-expanding pre-plastic-carrier shopping receptacle which was Granma's little string bag? But I unravel into useless digression.

Come with me now into the fascinating, yet ill-documented, world of the plastic carrier bag. Courtesy of the Plastic Bag Association, the Packaging and Industrial Films Association, and a global variety of earnest recycling organisations, I'll tell you things you never knew about mankind's portable pal, I guarantee.

Let's kick off with the very term ''plastic carrier bag''. Highly

inaccurate. Be told now that the handled poke in which you regularly carry around your plums - and all your other domestic comestibles - is, in fact, a piece of heat-bonded, screw-extruded, low-density polyethylene.

Plastic bag designer fashion snobbery? No such thing, or at least not among adults. The Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions last year came up with a survey which established that logos for Prada, Gucci, and Harrod's carry little extra cachet for the majority of us. We're happy with Tesco, Safeway, Sainsbury, Co-Op, Iceland, Asda, and Lidl, 52% of people being content re-using regular supermarket bags for their high street shopping.

In the same survey, 43% opted to re-use humble supermarket-branded carrier bags to tote their books and study materials to and from work, school, or college. Instead of fancy designer sports bags, 39% of people go to trendy pilates lessons or yoga with their gear in an old plakky bag.

Do plastic bags harm the environment? Most of them aren't biodegradable, it must be said, and they tend at best to work their way into landfill sites. Last year the Irish government proposed to tax bag-makers 3p a bag to try to reduce their use.

Predictably, this led to an outcry from the Plastic Bag Association, insistent that supposedly environmentally-friendly things like brown paper bags last as long as plastic in landfill. The PBA also cited scientific evidence that the process of paper-making for supermarket paper bags pollutes water, releases dioxins, contributes to acid rain, and costs trees.

In addition, the PBA wheeled out one of the German government's top environmental experts, Dr Heinrich von Lernser, who said: ''For ecological reasons, it is not sensible to change from polyethylene to paper carrier bags. ''Polyethylene carrier bags require less energy to manufacture, and cause, in all, less damage to the environment.''

Conservationist groups are adopting a more pragmatic approach towards the plastic carrier bag than of yore. Their websites offer 1001 recyclers' uses for what was once despised and derided.

Worn inside shoes and over socks, plastic bags can keep feet dry. Shredded plastic can be used to stuff some craft projects. They make good freezer bags. Wrapped tightly enough, they'll keep paint brushes from drying stiffly.

Tragically, sensible middle-aged tips like these won't help make plastic carrier bags hip with the teens of today. They're the ones who demand their play pieces come enveloped in Nike bags.

Plastic bags have had this youth-culture image problem ever since Purple Haze, when Jimi Hendrix waved his sixties freak flag high and sneered at Mr

Plastic Man for daring to point the finger. Hendrix didn't say as much, but Mr Plastic Man was near-certain to have been holding a plastic carrier bag, too.

More recently, Mercury Prize winner and hipper-than-hip junglist dude Roni Size pointedly refused to enliven dance floors with a track called Plastic Carrier Bag. Instead, he went for the altogether cooler Brown Paper Bag.

Who knows, maybe the times are a-changin' irrevocably for plakky bags, man. Word on the street is that Jamie Oliver, the scooter-riding Britpop groovester who's made cooking fashionable for new lads, is about to launch a new Lambretta with a wicker basket on the front. Vespa are similarly rumoured to be considering bringing back the tartan shopping trolley, this time with a 50cc engine.

Be that as it may, it's certainly true that the order-on-line internet age has prompted some supermarkets to reintroduce the vintage forerunner to the plastic bag: the discreet home backdoor delivery to the servants' quarters by non-logo'd van.

But you can't stuff your dirty socks in one afterwards. Plastic carrier bags. They work. Until they rip down the side against the sharp corner of your cereal packet, or the handles fall off, after having rubbed your fingers red raw on the walk home. They're a metaphor for something, plastic carrier bags. Not sure what.

I'll conclude with a sparkling conversational gambit with which to break the ice at parties: did you know that, within the industry, the supermarket plastic carrier bag comes in two basic designs, known as vest and patch-handle?

The semi-transparent vest-type is so-called because, when laid flat, its shape resembles that of a man's singlet. Your jumbo vest is 33cm by 48cm by 13cm. Patch-handles are of better quality, square, with a hole cut out at the top for the fingers. There's standard patch-handles, fashion patch-handles, and wallpaper patch-handles.

I'll bet you didn't know that. Fascinating stuff, yes?

If you should ever meet me at a party, by the way, you'll know me instantly. I'll be the bloke loitering in a corner, utterly alone, with a supermarket plastic carrier bag under my arm. A jumbo vest, usually.

When I begin speaking to you, please don't edge away from me or feign death. Because the topic of plastic carrier bags is one that.. oi, no! Come back!