Paper
or Plastic? Best neither
“Paper and plastic bags gobble up natural resources
and cause significant pollution. When you weight all the cost to the
environment, you might just choose to reuse”
The
Washington Post
Plastic checkout bags are a
relatively recent phenomenon; according to the Society
of the Plastics Industry, the plastic grocery bag was introduced in 1977.
Given its ubiquity, it's hard to believe they're only 31 years old. But it also
means there's a plastic bag generation among us, one more chink in the
disposable chain.
-
If you use paper bag, just check it out:
·
Americans
consume more than 10 billion paper bags each year. Some 14 million trees are
cut down annually for paper bag production.
·
The
use of toxic chemicals during the production of paper for bags contributes to
air pollution, such as acid rain, and water pollution.
·
Paper
must be returned to pulp by using many chemicals to bleach and disperse the
fibers. Although paper bags have a higher recycling rate than plastic, each new
paper grocery bag use is made from mostly virgin pulp for better strength and
elasticity. Bags that are recycled are often turned into corrugated cardboard,
not new paper bags.
·
Paper
is degradable, but it can not completely break down in modern landfills because
of the lack of water, oxygen and other necessary elements. About 95% of garbage
is buried beneath layers of soil that make it difficult for air and sunlight to
reach it
-
If you use plastic bag, just check it out:
·
Worldwide,
an estimated 4 billion plastic bags end up as litter each year. Tied end to
end, the bags could circle the Earth 63 times!
·
Hundreds
of thousands of marine mammals die every year after eating discarded plastic
bags. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Bags
choke animals or block their intestines.
·
A
single plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
·
More than
3.5 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were discarded in 2008.
·
Every square mile of ocean has
about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.
·
The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the
grocery store.
-
Paper Vs plastic
·
The
U.S. uses 100 billion plastic bags annually, made from an estimated 12 million
barrels of oil.
·
It
takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does
a plastic bag.
·
7 in
10 Americans do not know that plastic is made from petroleum products,
primarily oil, according to a recent nationwide online survey.
·
The
production of paper bags generates 70% more air and 50 times more water
pollutants than production of plastic bags.
·
It
takes 98% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a
pound of paper. But recycling of both types of bags are extremely low- plastic
(1-3%), paper (10-15%)
·
Even
though petroleum-based plastic will never biodegrade, nearly 4 in 10 believe
plastic will biodegrade underground, in landfills or in the ocean.
·
Gregory TenEyck, a spokesman for Safeway, said it
takes about seven trucks to carry the same amount of paper bags as one
truckload of plastic bags.
The Challenge and CO2 emissions
So here's the deal: we
challenge you not to use plastic bags or paper bags for 1 month. And if you
forget to bring your reusable bags for your shopping sometimes (I said a couple
of times) just extend the duration of the challenge.
With this small change
you'll be avoiding the emission of 6 pounds of CO2, is not it amazing!
At the end of the month,
I'm sure you're used to leave some reusable bags in the car, in your backpack
or office when you need to use it, and it will become natural to you.
Ps .: the end of the
month, you can came back and make the challenge over again.
A simple step that very
account for the Planet.
What changes we can do:
-
Invest in high-quality reusable bags: each of which
has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its
lifetime. The bag will pay for itself if your grocery store offers a 5- or
10-cent credit per bag.
-
Buy collapsible plastic crates and keep them in your
car. At checkout, food goes into the crates, making it easy to bring food into
the house in one or two trips.
-
Think twice about requesting a plastic bag if your
purchase is small and easy to carry.
-
Reuse the bags you have: Line your litter box with
them; crumple them and use them for packing. Cut the handles off, add some
string and make a toy parachute; use them for an impromptu diaper pail. Line
your trash cans with them; just be creative- I have certain that you will find
a way to customize the bags that you have!
-
Keep reusable bags in your home, office or car so they
are available when you go shopping.
More Information:
In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific
Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving,
clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents.
The area is an oceanic desert, filled
with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. But the area is filled
with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it
plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the
middle of the ocean.
The
gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash,
known as theWestern and
Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists
estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas.
Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all
trash floating in the world's oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every
square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of
plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually
sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends
up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic
eventually washing up on a distant shore.
The main problem with plastic --
besides there being so much of it -- is that it doesn't biodegrade.
No natural process can break it down. (Experts point out that the
durability that makes plastic so useful to humans also makes it quite harmful
to nature.) Instead, plastic photodegrades. A plastic cigarette lighter
cast out to sea will fragment into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic
without breaking into simpler compounds, which scientists estimate could take
hundreds of years. The small bits of plastic produced by photodegradation are
called mermaid tears or nurdles.
Plastic has acutely affected albatrosses, which roam a wide swath of the northern Pacific Ocean. Albatrosses
frequently grab food wherever they can find it, which leads to many of the
birds ingesting -- and dying from -- plastic and other trash. On Midway Island, which comes into contact with parts of the Eastern Garbage Patch,
albatrosses give birth to 500,000 chicks every year. Two hundred thousand of
them die, many of them by consuming plastic fed to them by their parents, who
confuse it for food [LA Times].
Most of this trash doesn't come from
seafaring vessels dumping junk -- 80 percent of ocean trash originates on land
[LA Times]. The rest comes from private and commercial ships, fishing equipment, oil platforms and spilled shipping containers (the
contents of which frequently wash up on faraway shores years later).
Scientists who have studied the issue
say that trawling the ocean for all of its trash is simply impossible and would
harm plankton and other marine life. In some areas, big fragments can be
collected, but it's simply not possible to thoroughly clean a section of ocean
that spans the area of a continent and extends 100 feet below the surface [UN
Environment Program].
Source:
How stuff works
Reading more about it here:
How Stuff Works?
Reuseit
The Washington Post
