Anyone who lived through grade school in the 1990s can relate to Jordan’s reminiscing about the heyday of recycled paper and its lasting effects on everyday products:

Consider this: during the early 90s, a green wave hit the marketplace and products such as recycled paper were being pushed as the environmentally friendly alternative. I remember proudly buying some gray notebook paper that was 100% recycled. It was terrible paper — very hard to write on, and easy to tear. But darn it, I was doing my part, as a kid in school, to help reduce waste.

The demand for 100% recycled paper died down. But paper companies continued to use some recycled content in their paper and improve the process. Much of the notebook paper kids use for school today has some amount of recycled content in it, as does a lot of the cardboard used for packaging fast food. The green wave of the 1990s might have died down, but it did bring recycled materials to the forefront as a viable way to create products.

Jordan goes on to apply the same logic to today’s hottest green trend: reusable bags. Though they’ve always been en vogue for those on the front lines of environmentalism, they never really caught on in the mainstream until this most recent wave of green living. Over the past few years, the average consumer has embraced tote bags for everything from groceries to library books with such a fervor that it makes one wonder why they never caught on before. Jordan’s theory: until now, no one ever attempted to make reusable bags appealing to consumers.

The truth of the matter is that reusable bags have been out there for years, but they haven’t been produced at a low enough price that they’ve been attractive to consumers. When grocery stores embraced them during the last “green” wave and began offering them for a dollar a bag, consumers could see the value of having a few. When being socially conscious is cheap and easy, many people are willing to give it a try.

Unfortunately, he notes, the cyclical nature of green marketing dictates that, by and large, the frenzy for environmentally conscious products will eventually die back down. On the whole, however, each new wave seems to raise consumer standards by exponential degrees. This time around, reusable bags seem to have finally taken hold and — like recycled products before it — are poised to take a permanent place in mainstream consumer culture.