Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Plastic bags are made from a derivative of natural gas, a fossil fuel
whose use creates carbon dioxide gas that increases global warming. And
fossil fuels are increasingly expensive.
Plastic bags may take a thousand years to decompose in a landfi ll. Few
of them are recycled.
Paper bags decompose much more rapidly than plastic bags and do
not form unsightly litter hanging from tree branches or cause the death
of sea creatures that get caught in them or eat them.
Favoring plastic are:
Contrary to the impression one gets from publications, paper is no
more “natural” than plastic. Nature produces trees, not paper, and many
millions of trees are cut down every year to produce paper bags. Huge
gas-guzzling and pollution-generating machines log, haul, and pulp trees.
The entire paper-making process is heavily dependent on chemicals,
electricity, and fossil fuels. Although plastic bags are produced from
natural gas, which, like paper, was formed from the tissues of living
organisms (one-celled marine plants and animals), these organisms died
naturally millions of years ago. To produce paper, living organisms, the
trees, are killed.
Paper bags require more energy and fossil fuels to manufacture than
plastic bags and generate more solid waste.
Plastic bag production uses less than 4 percent of the water needed to
make paper bags.
The EPA reports that making paper bags generates 70 percent more air
pollution and 50 times more water pollution than making plastic bags.
Forty-one million carbon dioxide-absorbing trees are saved each year
by using plastic rather than paper bags.
Despite their numerical abundance, plastic bags are thin, fl exible, and
compressible, and therefore occupy only 2 percent of landfi ll space. The
EPA says that nearly 100 landfi lls are closed every year because they are
full, and plastic bags take up much less space than paper bags do.
Manufacturers of plastic bags will be using 40 percent recycled content
by 2015, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and waste annually.
So there is a cost to the environment regardless of which kind of bag is
used. Despite the lack of a clear conclusion about the relative greenness
of paper and plastic bags, most people seem to believe paper is better.
Cloth bags are sold in many supermarkets in the United States for
between one and fi ve dollars. These reusable bags are most commonly
made from cotton, but the cotton-farming process is extremely fossil fuel
