How Do Bags Affect the Environment? If you want to know about this then you are at the right place. Here you will also find about Plastic bag pollution and the environment.
All of us want to make greener choices and help the environment but sometimes what’s best for the planet can be contrary. Like, single-use plastic shopping bags seem to rapidly be going extinct. They’re now banned by stores, towns...even entire countries! And in their place are durable, reusable, supposedly greener bags so problem solved, right?
Well, when we look at the entire lifecycle of a product, what’s best for the environment. There are different kinds of bags out there, but here, we’ll focus on five of the most popular: single-use plastic bags, single-use compostable or biodegradable plastic bags, paper bags, and different kinds of heavyweight bags: thick, reusable plastic ones, and the cotton tote bag. From that record, you might think you know which bag is best. But sometimes, our insight does not line up with reality. And that becomes fair when you look at Life Cycle Assessment. A Life Cycle Assessment is a study that looks at the environmental impact of a product during its lifecycle. How a product is formed, used, and disposed of and its impact on climate, and the environment. The climate change bit was pretty straightforward. They added up all the greenhouse gases emitted throughout the lifecycle of these bags. All greenhouse gases are not equal; each has a unique potential to warm the planet. But for easy comparison, all gases are converted to equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, the total environmental impact was a lot more complex. Here, the researchers looked at different effects — everything from ozone depletion to toxicity, to water and resource use... and a lot more. By putting a number on these things and adding them up, they could compare an expensive scope of impacts. The drawback is that this is a big oversimplification, and they couldn’t fit in some valuable variables. We’ll get to those later. But for now, the big question is, what did this study discover? Well, the first of all to consider is what it took to form the bags because producing them is the stage with the biggest impact. Single-used plastic bags are made of petroleum also known as oil. And the majority of the impact there came from changing the oil into the plastic material itself. For biodegradable plastic bags, a material called a starch-complexed biopolymer, a plastic that includes plant starches. Overall, the production of these bags releases a similar amount of greenhouse gases as making plastic bags that aren’t biodegradable. But there are also some extra effects of the agriculture involved in making the plant starches, like more fertilizer, water and pesticide use. So just from a production point, biodegradable plastic is actually not good as single-use stuff. Similarly, to make a paper bag, you need to begin with a tree. The process of turning pulp into paper can emit a lot of greenhouse gases! This depends on what kind of fuel the mill uses. Now, if we’ve been holding out for the reusable bags. See, thick, reusable plastic bags are also made from oil, so there’s a bigger impact. Heavier bags also need more fuel to transport them to the store. And cotton tote bags? These might seem like a green choice, but growing cotton requires a huge amount of water, land, fertilizer, and pesticides. On top of that, processing cotton is an energy-demanding process. So, when it comes to making the bag, single-used plastic wins by almost every measure. In this analysis, paper edged out single-used plastic lightly when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, but others disagreed and calculated that paper bags can be bad. And either way, when it comes to the production units, the worst material by far is cotton. Using a bag doesn’t cause pollution, but it does affect how we compare these materials. Like, you don’t use your nice cotton bag one time and then throw it away. Here, the easiest way to compare different materials is by looking at how many times you would need to reuse them to balance their impact, compared to using a new plastic bag at any time. If we just consider the impact of climate change, biodegradable paper and plastic bags are roughly the same as single-use plastic bags. Meanwhile, heavier reusable plastic bags need to be reused at least five times to make up for their climate change impact compared to single-use plastic. And cotton bags need to be reused at least 150 times. To offset climate change impact relative to a single-use plastic bag, they found you’d need to use a paper bag 3 times, a reusable plastic bag 12 times, and a cotton bag 130 times. But! If we look at the total environmental impact, all those numbers change if we add in the other categories with ozone effects, toxicity, runoff, and everything else. In that case, to be greener than a single-use plastic bag, biodegradable plastic bags, reusable plastic bags and paper need to be used about 50 times each. And cotton bags need to be reused 71 thousand times! That means even if you grocery shop two times per week, you need to use that same cotton bag for the next 40 years to have the same impact as using over 7 thousand single-use bags! And this estimate was even higher for organic cotton because organic crop yields are likely to be lower. You’d need to reuse that bag 20 thousand times! So there’s fairly an issue with some of these materials. Like, the numbers for reusable plastic bags are well within the expected lifetime. But for biodegradable plastic, cotton, or paper bags, the number of times you’d need to reuse them is well beyond how long you would hope an individual bag to last. It’s hard to get good data on what part of plastic bags is recycled, but we know it’s low, possibly around two to three percent. And bags that aren't recycled remain in landfills, clog sewers and pollute waterways. Plastic bags are especially bad since they’re easily flown by the wind and strewn across a large area. They also take a long time to break down and act as a direct threat to wildlife. They can become wrapped around creatures, mistaken for food, and eaten up. Regardless, biodegradable or compostable bags are supposed to solve this problem. Paper bags are biodegradable, so the impact of litter is not so high. And they’re recyclable! But when left to break down in a landfill, they release methane, a greenhouse gas. For the bulky reusable plastic and cotton bags, the disposal should be a smaller part of the overall footprint since optimistically they’ve been reused many times. Both can be recycled, but that doesn’t mean that they are always recycled. For example, only around fifteen percent of textiles are a broad category that includes cotton bags — the greenest bag. The best material depends on many others factors, including your individual habits, like how many times you reuse each type of bag and how you discard your bags. Overall, making single-use plastic bags has a relatively low impact on the environment, but waste is a huge problem with no good solution. The best choice for the end of a plastic bag’s life is to reuse it as a trash bag. Meanwhile, making paper or biodegradable plastic has higher impacts, but these materials lower the problem of litter. And the heavier reusable plastic bag is a great option if you reuse them enough. Cotton tote bags have by far the biggest impact on the environment. They look very trendy when you’ve got them on your shoulder. They need to be used thousands of times to counteract their footprint. So, the point is we’re not saying plastic bags are good. They’re not. But it is significant to remember that all the alternatives have an impact, too.
It’s not worth going out to buy a stylist's new reusable product if you already have one that works. And when you can’t use a bag anymore, do whatever you can to make sure it doesn’t become waste. It’s also worth keeping in mind that despite all the debate grocery bags get, they’re only a small part of the impact on this planet. But looking at the entire life cycle of any product can be a useful way to inspect nearly any aspect of our lives. From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, to how we get around by thinking through the effects of daily choices, individuals and corporations can get a better idea of the best way to reduce footprint.
