Both Paper bag and plastic bags have some advantages and some disadvantages.But the best choice may be neither paper nor plastic.One reusable cloth bag could replace hundreds of paper and plastic bags.
A year or so ago, I decided to start using less plastic. I bought an insulated water bottle for my morning coffee, as well as bee’s wax wraps to replace cellophane, and I largely stopped putting my groceries in plastic bags. Instead, I switched to cotton tote bags.
I felt really good about myself, until I saw a report published earlier this year by Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food that said that plastic bags are better for the environment than organic cotton tote bags. In fact, of all the shopping bags the study looked at — from paper to recycled plastic — cotton tote bags fared the worst: they need to be reused thousands of times to have the same environmental footprint as a lightweight plastic bag, according to the report. A study published in 2011 by the UK Environment Agency reached similar conclusions. So, was my decision to ditch plastic bags bad for the environment?
The answer is not that easy. First of all, these studies — called “life cycle assessments” — have to be taken with a grain of salt. The research looks at different types of shopping bags through all of their life cycles: from the extraction of the raw material needed to make the bag to the way the bags are used and then discarded. It then determines how “environmentally friendly” each bag is based on several impact categories, such as climate change, toxicity, and water use.
Here’s the rub: it’s basically impossible for one bag to score better than all other bags in each impact category, says David Tyler, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oregon. “So you have to decide, when you talk about the impact on the environment, what environmental impacts am I most interested in mitigating?” Tyler says.
I decided to give up plastic bags because I wanted to do something about the scourge of plastic pollution in our oceans. Scientists estimate that around 8 million metric tons of plastic trash enters the oceans every year. That plastic doesn’t degrade, and it poses a threat to wildlife, including corals. Sea turtles that eat plastic bags thinking they’re food can choke. Just last month, a dead whale in Spain was found to have more than 60 pounds of plastic waste in its stomach, including bags. Several cities in the US, like Austin, Los Angeles, and Seattle, banned single-use plastic bags to address the litter problem. Last month, New York governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a bill to nix plastic bags in New York state for that same reason.