Back in the old days all rice grew with enough straw to make its own containers for storage and shipping. When you finished one of these you could simply feed it to your livestock, use it to make New Year's, rope, winter gear, compost or fuel. Plastic just becomes toxic garbage. 
The standard weight of these "tawara" was 60kg, set so that anyone young, old, male or female ought to be able to lift and shoulder one. I doubt many moderns can do it. Farmers were supposed to be able to lift two at a time or climb ladders with one. Hundreds of times a day.
Making one (even small ones) takes an amateur about three hours. An experienced farmer could make three or four in that time. A lot of work but it must have been satisfying after all the labor growing the rice in the first place. All the materials came from the same rice paddy.
Every region and village had their own traditional patterns for making the tawara. Standing at a Tokyo market around 1900 you could identify where a tawara came from just by how it was made. Of course all of this is long lost or very nearly gone. In 20-30 years time: extinction.
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