Plastic Bag and Paper Bag Facts – What’s Best?

The growing concern about the waste of plastic and paper bags has many people puzzled as to which is the right thing to choose. Here are the facts.

The United States uses about 100 billion plastic bags a year according to the EPA, and less than 2% is recycled. Virgin resin to make the bags costs less than recycled resin, so it is not very profitable to recycle the bags. Most municipalities do not accept the bags in their recycling programs because they can gum up the machines. The average family uses about 1,000 plastic bags each year. Most are one-time use, but about 7% is reused for lining garbage cans, picking up dog waste, etc.

Plastic bags do not break down. The sun photodegrades the bags, which means that over time, the sun breaks down the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces. This is not actually a good thing, as tiny particles can enter the food chain, particularly when the bags litter the sea and are accidentally mistaken for food by wildlife. In the water, the bags look like jellyfish and are eaten, causing suffocation and sometimes entanglement. Millions of animals die each year with plastic bags. When an animal eats the plastic, it cannot digest it, so the toxins in the plastic remain, which humans can ingest when they eat the animal.

There is a place 1000 miles off the coast of San Francisco called the Garbage Patch. It is about twice the size of Texas and can be as deep as 300 feet. It is almost all plastic and is caught in what is called a twist. In fact, the water samples taken showed six parts plastic to one part plankton for food for marine life.

Trash has been found in plastic bags on remote islands and has even floated to Antarctica. The environmental hazards of plastic bags have caused them to be banned or taxed in more than twenty countries. Bags clogging sewer lines were blamed for the massive floods in Bangladesh in 1988 and 1998, prompting the first national ban in 2002.

Oil is needed to make plastic bags. China banned free plastic bags last summer and hopes to save 34 million barrels of oil each year. Ireland has a program called PlasTax that is credited with saving 400,000 barrels of oil.

Retailers switched to plastic bags in the late 1970s because they are significantly cheaper than paper bags and take up less storage space. It costs most retailers a couple of cents for a plastic bag and up to fifteen cents for a paper bag.

Paper bags are not necessarily superior to the environment. It takes 14 million trees to make the 10 billion paper bags used in the US Additionally, it takes much more energy to produce a paper bag than a plastic bag. However, more municipalities accept paper bags for recycling and 20% of the paper bags are recycled. The average family uses 400 paper bags a year. Although paper bags decompose, they often cannot in landfills because they lack the air and moisture necessary for decomposition.

One option that is making headway in the US is the reusable bag. Reusable bags should only be used eleven times to generate a positive environmental impact. A quality bag can save a couple thousand bags from the landfill. If you’re having trouble remembering your purse, look for one that folds into a self-storage pocket so you can keep it in your purse or pocket.

As more and more people discover, when asked about paper or plastic? The answer really is neither. Both cause significant damage to the environment and consume a lot of energy to produce. Consider answering: None. I brought my own bag.