Paper or Plastic?

Grocery shopping inevitably involves answering that common question: “Paper or Plastic?” But most people can’t say for sure which type of bag is better for the environment. Surprisingly, the answer may be neither! Read on to learn more about the impacts of disposable bags, at every stage from production and consumption to recycling and disposal.

Paper   Plastic
In America, approximately 10 billion paper bags are consumed each year. 14 billion trees are cut down annually to provide the raw materials for paper bags.
   Americans also use about 100 billion plastic bags each year, made from around 12 billion barrels of oil. Just among grocery bags, about 4 out of 5 are plastic.
Producing paper bags means cutting down
trees.
+  Logs are dried out, stripped of their bark, and cut into small chips.
+  The chips are cooked at very high temperatures, and then dissolved into pulp using limestone and sulfurous acid.
+  Pulp must be washed with huge amounts of fresh water and bleach, and then processed even further to make paper bags.
 
Plastic bags are made of polyethylene, a byproduct of refining oil.
+  Small polyethylene pellets are heated to about 340 degrees, and stretched to create a tube of plastic.
+  The plastic tube is divided into sections, which become the basis for plastic bags
+  The top and handles are cut out from each section; the bag is complete.
Paper bag production uses about four times as much energy as plastic bag production. Transporting paper bags also requires more energy and generates more carbon dioxide emissions, since they are much heavier. For instance, 2000 paper bags weigh 280 pounds, while the same number of plastic bags weighs only 30 pounds.
   Plastic bag production is less energy intensive, but utilizes more hazardous chemicals. Five of the top six chemicals said by the EPA to generate hazardous waste are commonly used by the plastics industry.  
Recycling paper bags is takes a surprising amount of energy by itself! About 1,444 BTU’s of energy are required to recycle a pound of paper, in addition to even more fresh water and bleach required to return the paper to its pulp form. Even then, only 10 to 15% of paper bags are recycled anyway.   Plastic bags can be recycled more cheaply from an energy perspective than paper, but their recycling rates are so low that it becomes almost irrelevant. Only 1 to 2% of plastic bags are ever recycled; more often, they end up in landfills, as litter in cities, or in wildlife habitats.
Paper, though biodegradable, doesn’t actually break down for the most part in modern landfills. The process of degrading requires air and sunlight, but a paper bag in a landfill will likely be buried beneath layers of soil and garbage.   Plastic bags made from polyethylene will never biodegrade, although they take up less space in landfills than an equivalent number of paper bags.