These days, culture wars can break out on any topic. From NFL stars kneeling to female Time Lords, and even chicken rendang, instant outrage is now an endlessly renewable resource.

In Australia, the furore du jour is banning plastic bags, where much of the country lags behind Botswana, Tanzania, and the state of South Australia, which abandoned them in 2009 without any detriment besides the lost sales of 400 million bags.

Coles reverses plastic bag policy again in 'frustrating flip-flop' Read more

Following a public campaign, most Australian supermarket chains removed single-use plastic bags a few weeks ago, and while Woolworths has held the line, its major competitor Coles has been thrashing around like a bluefin tuna choking on one of their bags.

On 1 July, Coles replaced its disposable grey bags with reusable, 80% recycled bags for 15c, and gave them away to help customers adjust.

But even with free bags, the backlash was significant. Customers stole baskets and trolleys, and one Woolworths employee was reportedly assaulted. So Coles announced it would give away reusable bags indefinitely – effectively replacing thin single-use bags with much thicker ones.

This led to another backlash, so Coles backflipped on their backflip and announced that the 15c charge would return on 29 August, although the company’s dignity will take far longer to restore.

Price and his fellow plastic libertarians aren’t fighting this because they care about the right to wrap shopping in a flimsy petrochemical sheath

Coles’ marketing is idiosyncratic – not many companies put Status Quo in their ads – but its bag contortions illustrate the challenge for any major corporation trying to embrace social responsibility. Our public sphere is now so divided that taking stances on social issues inevitably provokes criticism for pandering to trendy causes.

It should be obvious to anyone who’s seen photos of the Great Pacific garbage patch, which is now far larger than France, that we need to reduce plastic waste. And yet for Steve Price, a proudly contrarian radio presenter who’s one of the leading trolls beneath Melbourne’s bridges, this doesn’t matter, because plastic bags only end up in the oceans “in Southeast Asia, not here”.

“How many people in Dubbo are killing porpoises with plastic bags? None!”, he said, naming an inland city in an attempt to shove a rhetorical Aldi bag down his opponent’s throat.

Price and his fellow plastic libertarians aren’t fighting this because they care about the right to wrap shopping in a flimsy petrochemical sheath. What they hate is that the public consensus on many social issues has moved to the left.

When 20 leading Australian CEOs write a public letter advocating same-sex marriage and Starbucks commits to hiring refugees, it’s clear that the goalposts have shifted. Price and his ilk dismiss this as shallow fashion, but social consensus has always evolved, which is why Price regularly appears on a TV show with a Muslim host.

Two other top-rating talkback presenters recently demanded that the prime minister tackle “political correctness” because it leads to people being targeted for their views, and they hate that happening outside their own programmes.

But “political correctness” often reflects a majority view, as Australian conservatives found when they forced a vote on same-sex marriage.

As social consensus shifts, the backlash grows in intensity, even winning occasional victories. One of the factors behind the Brexit vote was the perception that the EU lectures Britain on social issues, and a similar resentment drives Trumpism.

The US president is currently cancelling regulations that reduce automobile emissions, terrifyingly – and it’s a safe bet that one major reasons is because they were introduced by that trendy Barack Obama. Some American conservatives are even drawing parallels between bids to ban assault rifles and plastic straws.

Coles ultimately upheld its bag ban, but the exercise seems like greenwashing given their other current initiative – tiny plastic toy versions of their most popular products, given away when you spend $30. With thirty to collect, it’s a fiendishly clever way of brainwashing kids into nagging their parents to shop at Coles – and the scheme’s huge popularity has flooded Australian homes with still more plastic.

'Mad marketing': Coles Little Shop for children undercuts plastic bag ban, critics say Read more

Some skeptics might argue that any supermarket that still sells individually wrapped slices of banana bread doesn’t really care about reducing plastic. But like most big corporations nowadays, Coles certainly cares about appearing like it cares.

Increasingly, corporate public relations considerations are achieving positive social change. By convincing companies that adopting green positions benefits sales, problems like pollution can be tackled more quickly than is currently being achieved by our nervous – or downright hostile – governments.

And if a few crusty conservatives can be enraged at the same time, maybe all this “political correctness” is just plain correct?

• Dom Knight is a writer, broadcaster and co-founder of The Chaser