We’ve been talking a lot about plastic in the last couple of weeks. It seems wherever we go we end up talking about the problems with plastic and discussing the trials and tribulations of our No Plastic October. There’s one specific question which keeps popping up again and again…
“Is paper really better than plastic?”
People are, of course, mainly referring to paper bags versus plastic bags. Plastic definitely scores bad points for being non-biodegradable but that’s not the whole story. There are all kinds of factors to consider when weighing up different options.
As Leyla Acaroglu points out in her fascinating Ted Talk, to define a material as ‘sustainable’ is a complicated process as we must consider its entire lifetime; production of source materials, the manufacturing process, transportation, and what happens to the material at the end of its useful life.
Leyla Acaroglu tells us that paper is calculated to be a more sustainable option than plastic when measured per gram of material. However, the fact that paper bags weigh 10 times more than plastic ones means that the environmental impact per bag is amplified and paper bags end up packing a bigger environmental punch than their plastic counterparts. Oh dear.
The plastic advocates in the room start to smile at this point as it appears there’s a great reason for us to all keep using plastic carrier bags.
However, I imagine some of you may have seen through this argument and realised that there is a third option…
Paper vs. plastic vs… nothing?
If we take a reusable bag to the shops with us and say “No” to both plastic and paper bags then our environmental impact from bag use on that shopping trip is pretty much zero. Awesome.
The environmental impact from producing reusable shopping bags is spread over their entire lifetimes. In other words, each time we use our reusable shopping bags their environmental impact is happily decreased. Super awesome.
We’re not the only people considering the environmental impact of different shopping bags. Researchers from Australia have just published a paper showing the environmental implications of different bag types. The New Energy Cycle have taken their data and made an interactive infographic allowing us to compare the environmental impact of these different bag types.
I wasn’t expecting paper bags to do very well so wasn’t surprised to find that paper bags fared worse than plastic bags on most environmental measures. I was very happy to see that their most environmentally friendly option was a reusable bag. Unfortunately they only considered plastic reusable bags but I feel happy assuming that the same is true for our trusty canvas bags.
It seems that reusing is really the key to being environmentally friendly.
Or, in the words of Alexis at The Atlantic:
Unpackage Me 