.... Franklin and Associates examine the amount of energy needed to produce the bag, and the pollutants resulting from the bag throughout its lifespan. Also, a single plastic bag carries about 2x the amount of goods that go into a paper bag. However, stores typically use improper bagging techniques with plastic bags (update: I take this to mean that they double-bag and possibly don't put as many items in the bag as they could), so to be as realistic as possible, all of the evaluations below compare 2 plastic bags to 1 paper bag. You'll see that even using the 2-to-1 plastic-to-paper ratio, plastic comes out as less energy intensive.Well it doesn't look to good for paper does it? The above does leave out a couple of pesky details.
- According to the EPA in 2002, Americans currently recycle 0.6% of plastic bags and 19.4% of paper bags.
- A single paper bag uses the energy equivalent of 550 kJ of wood as feedstock. It also uses 500 kJ of petroleum and 350 kJ of coal for process energy. The total amount of energy used by a single paper bag is 1,680 kJ.
- Two plastic bags use 990 kJ of natural gas, 240 kJ of petroleum, and 160 kJ of coal. The energy used for two plastic bags is 1,470 kJ. Two plastic bags use 87% the amount of energy used by one paper.
- All of these calculations take into account current recycling rates, and paper bags need a recycling rate of at least 50% to be more energy efficient than twice the number of plastics.
- Plastic bags, having less mass than paper, produce less solid waste. At current recycling rates two plastic bags produces 14 g of solid waste while one paper creates 50 g.
- Atmospheric waste and waterborne pollutants are also higher for paper bags.
- Paper bags are biodegradable
- Trees are a renewable resource
and
We probably need to take a look at Franklin and Associates, Ltd when we judge the above data.
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