Dr. Mercola November 06 2008 65,526 views
"Paper or plastic?" It seems like it should be an easy choice, but from durability and reusability to life cycle costs, there's a lot more to each bag than meets the eye.
Paper comes from trees -- lots and lots of trees. The trees are found, marked and felled in a process that all too often involves clear-cutting, resulting in massive habitat destruction and long-term ecological damage. It takes approximately three tons of wood chips to make one ton of pulp. The pulp is washed and bleached, and both stages require thousands of gallons of clean water.
If you throw them away, they'll eventually break down over many, many years. But if you choose to recycle the paper bags, then things get a little tricky. The paper must first be re-pulped, which usually requires a chemical process involving compounds like hydrogen peroxide, sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide, which bleach and separate the pulp fibers.
Unlike paper bags, plastic bags are typically made from oil, a non-renewable resource. Plastics are a by-product of the oil-refining process, accounting for about four percent of oil production around the globe. Like paper, plastic can be recycled, but it isn't simple or easy. Recycling involves essentially re-melting the bags and re-casting the plastic.
According to a life cycle analysis, plastic bags create fewer airborne emissions and require less energy per 10,000 equivalent uses. But paper bags can hold more stuff per bag -- anywhere from 50 percent to 400 percent more, depending on how they're packed, since they hold more volume and are sturdier.
Ultimately, neither paper nor plastic bags are the best choice; choosing reusable canvas bags instead is the way to go. From an energy standpoint, canvas bags are 14 times better than plastic bags and 39 times better than paper bags!
Did you know that, worldwide, we use an estimated one million plastic bags each minute? Somewhere between 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used and discarded EVERY year. Of those, only 1 percent or so are recycled – at a cost higher than what it would cost to produce a brand new one.
The rest ends up in landfills, in our oceans, and as litter strewn across the globe. Plastic bag litter can now be found as far north as Spitsbergen (78° North latitude), and as far south as the Falklands (51° South latitude).
The first plastic “baggies” for bread, sandwiches, fruits, and vegetables were introduced in the United States in 1957. By the late 1960s plastic trash bags started appearing in homes and along curbsides around the world. It’s hard to believe that in just 50-some years our thoughtless consumption has managed to turn parts of our oceans into a plastic concoction that now contains six times more plastic by weight than plankton!
Plastic Bags are Forever
Many people don’t realize that plastic bags don’t biodegrade. They photodegrade, slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits, which contaminate soil and waterways, where it enters the food chain - as animals mistake these tiny bits and pieces for food.
While plastic left in the sun on land can absorb infrared heat, which helps this process along, plastic in water takes far longer. Worse yet, even though the “ghostlike fishnet” made from photodegradable plastic might disintegrate before it drowns a dolphin, its chemical nature will not change for perhaps thousands of years. The filter feeders of the oceans will still ingest it.
Except for a small amount of plastic that has been incinerated, every single bit of plastic manufactured in the last 50+ years still remains somewhere in the environment. That half-century’s total production has already surpassed 1 billion tons.
Additionally, it takes 11 barrels of oil to produce one ton of plastic bags, which means we’ve used up some 11 billion barrels of a non-renewable resource to satisfy our want for convenience.
This plastic pollution causes more than 1 million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and even more fish to die in the North Pacific alone, every year. And, let’s not forget, it’s not just marine animals that are poisoned by all this plastic. You too are now ingesting plastics every day, and being exposed to a potentially deadly mix of plastic chemicals and additives, including:
What happens to your body when you breathe, eat, drink, and absorb all of this plastic? Obesity, declining fertility rates and other reproductive problems, cancer, and more.
Why Switching to Paper is FAR From the Best Solution
While switching to paper might appear to be better than sticking with plastic, paper also, unfortunately, comes at a very high price to your environment, and your health. In fact, they’re roughly equal in their number of pros and cons. For example:
Don’t Just Ask For Change -- Be It
Simple lifestyle changes can do wonders for your health and the environment, and using reusable bags instead of plastic or paper bags is among the absolute easiest. Remember, each reusable shopping bag you use has the potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic bags over its lifetime. This is clearly one area where you can have a dramatic impact if you encourage your friends, family and neighbors to follow your lead.
Get Your FREE Stylish Mercola.com Grocery Bags
To help you get started, I will be giving away one reusable bag with every order over $25 for the next week.
Perhaps we could get the hemp industry to make bags. Save a lot of trees. What are the shopping bags made of now?
I agree completely-to use hemp for paper products as well as clothing, bags and all other items. GO GREEN!!
That would be awesome...but first we have to get hemp legal to grow in the U.S. Even though one would have to smoke an entire field of industrial hemp to get enough to get high, the government won't allow it because of our money-draining, pathetically failing "war on drugs". Everyone support hemp legalization!
Hemp for paper bags does not solve the problem. First, as in paper, it would still take a long time to degrade in a landfill (unless it is composted, and how many landfills do this). Also, it still requires space to plant the hemp, which takes away from space to plant food crops. Do you realize how much hemp would be needed to make all the needed paper bags each year? Why not just use re-usable cloth bags?
However, as flbooks7 above indicates, what do we use for trash bags for those trash items that cannot be recycled?
CCurtis, hemp can be made into paper but perhaps Seasoned Citizen is speaking about making reusable shopping totes out of hemp. Hemp is what the original Levi's jeans were made of. I may be wrong, but I typically think of hemp as more of a fabric than a paper product. It's probably because I own hemp socks, hemp t-shirts, hemp jeans, etc. I propose that all the farmers currently growing all that GMO corn that is fed to us (through HFCS) and to the cows and making everyone sick, switch to industrial hemp. That way it doesn't take anymore land space away from those growing things like healthy, edible vegetables and the farmers are actually producing something useful instead of that Monsanto franken-food. Just a thought. Perhaps one day. Sigh....
Yeah, I mean I don't understand why the government banned hemp.. back in the day our fore fathers used hemp for pretty much everything.. rope, military clothing, even our Constitution is written on hemp paper!
Those who object to Hemp, are misinformed concerning it's connection to marijuana. Truth be told it would take a joint the size of a utility pole to get a high from hemp. Being anti Hemp started because of Hearst Industries conceived threat to his paper mills that used wood pulp, and did not want competition. Also those who wanted to destroy America's family Farm Industry did want another cash crop on the market. There are many items that can be made from Hemp, that are superior to what we now use.
Hemp I find is the best.Hemp grows fast like weeds and is bio-degradable.Hemp was made illegal by the oil companies.Plastic makes them richer.They don't care about the polution just their money.You can make things out of hemp you can make from oil.
I have switched to cloth shopping bags....and cloth napkins and rags instead of paper towels, but can't figure out what to use instead of plastic garbage bags.
Try no trash can liners. If you compost your food waste there's not much mess in the can. I take messy stuff directly to the dumpster and try to be careful not to mess up the dumpster too much. I do have to hose out my indoor trash cans occasionally and live with stains at the bottom.
Flbooks7:
I am with you, as to what to use as garbage bags. You know there is a plastic island the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean as we speak.
there is a new product on the market, using corn starch instead of plastic. at a restaurant i go to, they use straws, takeaway boxes which are made of cornstarch.
i havent seen any negatives to these seeing how they are biodegradable. the only thing i can think of is how they are made, genetically engineered corn?
other than that, they are durable and biodegradable, not sure if they make trash bags, but i would think they do. probably can google them.
If you get a free newspaper delivered then wrap your waste in the newspaper, particularly bones etc that you don't usually compost. Better still compost what you can or if you live in a unit you can use a bokashi bucket and then put all your food waste into that then bury it or put in with your compost outside or take to a community garden for their compost . All your other waste should be sorted into the appropriate recycling bins and for non recycling just bin it there's no need to put anything into a plastic bag of any description, it all gets mixed up in the truck anyway. We used to live without them, we can live without them again.
Why not skip the bin liner completely? It is a pain to wash it out at the end of the week (or more if it stinks), but people did without trash can liners for a very long time before their advent.
Biodegradable plastic bags were made here in Australia. One of the employees from the manufacturer told me that the plastic was stuck together with potato starch. The potato starch degraded but left minute pieces of plastic left to pollute the environment. Is this the same as the corn starch bags. Don't take anything for granted. I wish we had already banned plastic bags but I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen. We use a bokashi bucket and compost everything organic except bones and paper. That then goes into producing great tasting vegies and fruit. Everything else goes straight into the bin that can't be recycled. We don't have much to put into the bin. Mostly kitty litter. Any suggestions for the kitty litter?
many years ago, while in Hungary, i learned to take my own bags and containers to shop for food and groceries. otherwise, they would just hand it to you. yes, even cottage cheese was dipped from a large container and placed in yours, or your hand if you did not have something to put it in. i also discovered t he strechie "fish net " bags that will roll up in your purse. i have at least a dozen canvas bags, all gathered from various conventions, conferences etc. that i have attended. i always take them with me when i buy groceries. it sure does mess with the rotating bag filling system at wal-mart, but i figure that is their problem. it is a good habit to get into and makes sense. the only maintanance required is a dip in the washing machine occasionally. just do it.
Well, except that I've never been to Hungary, and don't shop at Wal-Mart, you wrote my post for me! Like you, it seems every conference I've gone to has given me a cloth bag, and I bought one of those net bags for convenience. I keep them in the car and carry some into stores with me. What if stores simply flat-out stopped providing bags? Then we'd HAVE to bring our own. Hah!
There is a grocery store chain here in my area (Oklahoma) called Aldi. I think they are Italian owned. Anyway, they charge 5 cents for paper bags and 10 cents for plastic ones. They also let you use their boxes that the groceries came in for free. But since they are more of a discount store, the shoppers there bring their own bags to save the money, which of course helps the environment even if thrift was the original intent. Perhaps if more stores did this (charge for bags), more people would carry totes. I have a "Chicobag", among all my other reusable totes, that I carry at all times since it rolls up so tiny that it fits in the smallest of purses. My husband even carries it in his pocket sometimes.
Dear active lady, What did you take to the store to put your cottage in?
I just moved from Holland, where I learned to use cloth bags, or carry my food home in my hands.Bags were not available and each person knew to bring cloth bags, or use a box(with a hole in the bottom) to get home with groceries. A quick lesson for me, and I now use the cloth bags in California. I collected them all over Europe as I travelled, not knowing that when I returned, they would be so useful. Walmart has a rough time figuring out what to do, but slowly they are learning that not everyone needs the plastic on the wheel as they package things. As we all learn what to do, things will improve, and we can, with our actions, influence others to think about the environment.
As the one person said, in Holland they also charged for bags. I always laughed when I would have forgotten my cloth bag, and with my arms full, they would say, "Een tasje, alstublieft?" (Would you like a bagt)? If you said yes, there was a 50 eurocent charge for each bag.
Why isn't the alternative of NO Bag promoted and suggested????
In most stores I buy a few items and they keep trying to give me bags.
In other stores where I have more items, I still take NO bag and wheel the grocery cart to my car and put the stuff. Then I get a little more exercise since it takes a few more trips between house and car.
I also remind the clerks, many of whom are bent on the end of the world and could care less about the future except their destination, that their children and grandchildren will be EATING in some fashion the bags we use today.
Avoid using anything we wouldn't want to ingest ourselves and we all live in a cleaner world.
To Sigrun,
i resent your remark about clerks who don't care. How can you dare to assume that and pass judgement. I work as a service clerk for a major drug store chain and when people come up to my counter with one item, I ask if they want a bag for it. Most say no and others do say yes, when they say yes should I say NO, you shouldn't? My job consists of ringing merchandise, selling suggestive items MANDATED by the COMPANY, and placing items in a plastic bag. Am I supposed to make another suggestion to purchase a canvas bag? You tell me what am I supposed to say to the persons that want the plastic bag? Insist they should not have their item or items in plastic bags and raise the issues of the harm the bags cause? Have lines build up and have people angry because they have to wait? Put yourself in my place and get real.When I lose my job for not giving the customer a bag for their purchases are you going to support me? We have reusable bags near the counter, if a customer wants to buy one the opportunity is there. I live in the Chicago area and it would be great if we had a ban on plastic bags like San Francisco and other cities around the world but we don't. You are just a model citizen, perhaps you can help the seniors make several trips and you can get more exercise. Stores like Aldi (discount grocery store) don't provide bags, but sell them. wouldn't it be great if all they sold was canvas or reusable bags? So don't blame the service clerks, they are doing their job and some may be overly zealous in their bagging, but not all. BTW, I bring my reusable bags to the grocery store when I shop. Oh yes, and I think hemp bags are definitely the way to go.
KAJ- He passes that judgement because my experience here in the northeast of the US is that store clerks on the average are people with less than average intelligence. This is no more evident than in Wal Mart where it is like dealing with grunting neanderthals for basic information on store purchases. When the cognitve skills of the individual are up to par then it is usually a case of a disaffected teenager with the social skills of a dormant anthrax spore that just lies silently without a clue to when it will emerge. Add to that the multitude of individuals that are all of the above PLUS use English as a second language and one may as well explain plastic pollution to a rock because these individuals are incapable of understanding anything other than their own personal pain or pleasure. Harsh words but sometimes reality tastes bitter.
Sigrun:
You are correct, buy your own, a boat tote, made of cotton, or jute, or even hemp.
KAJ, we are raised in a self-centered age in which judgment is an assumed part of the make up of people. This is a belief system based on judgment. Not everyone subscribes to judgment and I was not speaking of you specifically.
If in this age, we permit the one offended individual to prevent the other from speaking for greater good, we lose the voices of reason, dissent, and personal responsibility.
Buckle up, man. If you want to take things personally, go talk to yourself in the mirror. This is an open forum. Keep offering choice as you do to your customers. It's a good thing.
My mother gave me a set of cotton canvas bags in 1992 (she stenciled and dated them for posterity!) that I eventually got in the habit of using every time I went grocery shopping. Those bags started to give out in 2004, so I bought four hemp bags from reusablebags.com. Love 'em! So light and strong, the new bags have the capacity of three or four plastic grocery bags ... and I can use them many times before I throw them in the wash with my regular laundry. They even have long handles I can swing over my shoulder for easy carrying.
I also bought some light cotton sacks with pull cords through the top that I use for some produce (usually the wet stuff that has been "misted") and bulk items (e.g., beans, nuts, and grains). OK, so I'm rather maniacal about using my reusable bags ... but it really kills me when a shopper chooses *one* piece of produce (say, an orange, or a cucumber), then places it in a plastic produce bag before putting it in the shopping basket. WHAT is the point of that?? Does the plastic bag really make shopping or checking out easier? Argh! Like reusablebags.com says, BYOB!