Paper or Plastic?

Paper or plastic? This question has been posed to us for generations in the check-out line of the grocery store. There’s not much difference in the bags themselves; the paper bag may be slightly larger and more durable, but the plastic is very easy to carry. Which, then, is better for the environment? Plastic bags are made from crude oil extracts and take up to one thousand years to biodegrade. Paper bags, on the other hand, are made from trees and take massive amounts of energy to manufacture. The question we should be asking is not “paper or plastic?” but “when did we make the choice to live in a disposable (albeit convenient) world?” In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency published information that between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed every year (National Geographic News). The materials used, the production methods, and the means of disposal exhibit the not reusable grocery bag’s destructive environmental impact.

The primary sources of the key ingredients in plastic grocery bags are petroleum and natural gas. About 10% of the nation’s oil consumption goes to synthesis of plastics. Paper bags are made from commercially cut trees. In 1999 about 14 million trees were harvested to make 10 billion paper bags in the US alone. In the realm of materials, it is a draw for which has a more negative effect on the environment. Our choice here is whether we prefer deforestation (and all the damages which come with it), or drilling for and using nonrenewable energy sources to create disposable items (ABC News).

When trees are harvested, more is damaged than the individual trees. Whole ecosystems are built around the habitat of the land, and removal of trees can threaten the species (both flora and fauna) that live in the vicinity. Beyond this direct damage, commercial deforestation requires the use of many heavy machines and equipment, which also can damage the ecosystem. Roads must be built to get to a section for harvest; roads which displace still more species. While these paper bags can be made out of recycled paper, this uses up massive amounts of energy (Chemical and Engineering News).

Plastic grocery bags, on the other hand, are made from petroleum and natural gas, both of which require extensive processing and refining. In addition, both of these key ingredients are full of unutilized energy when in the form of a bag. Plastic bags may take less energy to produce but the fact that they are made from petroleum (a nonrenewable) based plastic makes them comparable to paper bags in terms of waste and energy consumption (Chemical and Engineering News).

What happens to these disposables after they help you get your groceries home? On a positive note, both plastic bags and paper bags can be recycled. Plastic bags can be made into white resin deck furniture (and other plastic products), and paper bags can be recycled to make more paper products. Unfortunately, less than one percent of plastic bags (about 0.6%) see a second usage. For the other 99.4% of plastic bags (994,000,000,000 of them annually), it’s off to the dump along with the paper bags that weren’t recycled (about 90% of paper bags aren’t recycled) (National Geographic News).

But surely paper wins the ecological award in the area of waste. Unfortunately, it does not. In fact, in today’s dumps, trash is isolated from light, water and oxygen; necessary ingredients for natural materials (like paper) to biodegrade. Thus, in dumps in the United States, paper bags decompose at nearly the same rate as plastic ones. Surprisingly, when not disposed of properly, paper bags can spread even more groundwater and airborne contamination than their plastic counterparts. Further perpetuating damages caused by improper disposal of plastic bags is that many of these littered bags find their way to the sea. Marine animals such as a turtles have been known to mistake them as jellyfish and try to eat them (Get Green).

Problems grow beyond simple questions like “paper or plastic?” The root of this question is why do we spend so much time and energy creating what will inevitably become waste after one or, at best, two uses? How did we get to the point where we cut down the trees that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen to make disposable grocery sacks out of the pulp? Why do we use 10% of one of the most potent energy forms on the planet to create the non-reusable objects that fill our dumps and clutter our streets? More so than either paper or plastic bags, disposability is the problem.

In today’s so-called “eco-friendly” society, the question should not be “Paper or plastic” but “Deforestation or non renewable resource?” People want to be eco friendly but not as much, it seems, as they wish to live in a world of convenience. One time use exemplifies this idea. As more and more people populate this planet, more and more are realizing that there is a serious problem. What may be convenient for us is not convenient for this planet. However, there is an answer to the dilemma of paper versus plastic, and it’s “Neither.”

Works Cited:

1) National Geographic News: Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?

< http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plasticbags.html>

2) Chemical and Engineering News: Plastic Bags

< http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8238plasticbags.html>

3) Get Green! Facts: What the media is saying about plastic bags

< http://www.greensak.com/page4.html>

4) ABC News: No bags, Thanks! < http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bags/default.htm>

Isms Afterthought

Although the period of my consciousness on this planet is still short, as of the date that this is written, I can think of no time in history when there was such oppression against this simple and essential question (with the exception of McCarthyism in the fifties).


Why?


I am absolutely astonished that so many people don't ask this simple question.

It is an essential question which needs to be asked (and not only tolerated, but encouraged) more often. Without this question, it would be impossible for Democracy to exist, and indeed when it is not asked, we see the democratic spirit upon which this country was founded wane.

It is interesting how the most radical (radical in this case meaning those who don't "go with the flow") are often socially "casted out". We call them "hippies", "tree huggers", "animal rights wackos", "liberals" and any number of other things. They are almost always looked down upon, laughed at and joked about and they are always a very small number compared to the majority. And yet they are the ones who seem to make the changes see.

While there are countless, here is one example:

During the early 1960s, a group of four African American freshmen sat down at the counter of a diner near their college in Greensboro. As was commonly accepted at that time (at least up to that point), they were not served. The movement gained speed as the weeks and months went by and the sit down protest spread around North Carolina and then over other states. Bravely facing the verbal and physical abuse which surely ensued, these brave people saw an injustice and decided to change it. By the time the civil rights act was passed (1964), many of the formerly segregated stores and diners became integrated.

These freshmen in North Carolina did not wait for the government to remedy the problem. They asked "why" and understood the injustice of the circumstance and changed it.


A similar example is the desegregation of the public transportation system.

Another is the small group of free thinking British citizens in a colony in the New World who were fed up with being under control of (what they believed to be) an oppressive regime thousands of miles away.

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

Isms

I just read a very interesting article titled “What is a Freegan?” In short, they describe a Freegan as

“people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.” (More info/the whole article can be found at www.freegan.info )

Freegans, as I understand it, realize the flaws in our economic system and as opposed to selecting one evil over another, they simply reject the system as a whole. Some themes mentioned in the article (which I would strongly recommend reading) include: Waste Reclamation, Waste Minimization, Eco-Friendly Transportation, Rent-Free housing, Going Green, Working less/Voluntary Joblessness.

According to the article, the word “Freegan” comes from a compound of the words “Free” and “Vegan”.

“Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy. Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as "pests", the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.”

This made a lot of sense to me for a lot of reasons. One of the most apparent stems from the glaring contradictions I see through some of my friends. One of my friends in particular is strongly against animal cruelty and avoids all products/medicines violating this belief of hers. It’s the same person; however who buys Nike shoes which are made by an eleven year old in a Chinese sweatshop.

Likewise, another friend refuses to eat meat, but instead feeds into the American Myth that consumption will make you happier. At the root of this is immense quantities of waste, exponential depletion of natural resources, causing severe damage to natural environments for raw materials and carbon-based fuels to send the raw materials to Asia and then use petrol to haul back completed and assembled products (like new Nikes). Throw in the abuse to all laborers (many of whom are underage, overworked, and underpaid) and we certainly have danger brewing.

I suppose that’s why the Freegan movement is so interesting and appealing to me. How else can we sidestep evils which are so deeply rooted in the system, short of starting from scratch?

It is interesting to think of the cycle as a train going around a circular track. There is no place to say “we change the way we act past this point” because, in fact, there is no place in the cycle that isn’t a crime to humanity and nature. The only thing that can be considered a “solution” is to stop the train; if not for everyone, at least in our own lives.

As a side note, we should ask ourselves: How happy do these material things actually make us? Do your new Nikes make you a happier person? If not, ask who convinces you to buy these things? Not as though our happiness over petty material objects would be cause to let these conditions exist. How can we, as human beings, let this injustice exist?

This follows closely one of the most dangerous ideas (in my opinion) in the world today: Sheeple. People who choose to follow as opposed to think. People, who are nothing but undistinguishable faces in the crowd, whose individuality not only no longer exist, but needs not exist. Sheeple collectively and unquestionably follow authority figures (including but not limited to Media, Advertisements, Branding and the fallacy of social pressures whose fires are stoked by the aforementioned)

I think that this is the reason that I (along with a growing number of people) have not been able to just forget about the vicious and degenerative cycle of consumption. We really aren’t any happier. If we were, it would be a lot easier to forget and continue living out our lives.

So, Isms. There are many similarities. If we simply gently scratch the surface, we see that “Animal Rights” can be extrapolated to include not only animal testing but human sweatshop labor. It can also be inclusive of rejection of the logging, mining and oil industries (which comprise some of the most concentrated sources of ecosystem destruction through deforestation, improper waste disposal, poor drilling practices, oil spills, and the seemingly irreparable damage caused by the burning of carbon based fuels TO NAME A FEW). Being against carbon fuels entails being against driving, 95% of the electricity in the USA, and the plastics industry. Not to mention all objects not made in a very near proximity to you (because that pair of shoes takes a lot of petrol to be shipped from China to you).

Well wait, you just wanted to protect animals, right?

Another interesting thing I learned recently is that for all of these “solutions” there is a big grey area. As demonstrated above, it’s nearly impossible to stop all adverse affects to animals. In fact, the best thing to do to preserve animals would be to kill yourself in the forest and nourish the wild (ironic, yeah?).

The bigger picture, though, is that all of the people who embrace “isms” have one common streak. We all want to do what is right (and “what is right?” is a completely different conversation). We just choose different places we want to do the right thing. Freegans are, in this sense, the unifiers of all of the isms. As opposed to saying “I reject products which test on animals”, Freegans say “I reject your system because it is so inherently flawed, and I choose to introduce my own.”

Certainly there are negative connotations with such a belief, especially in a culture based in consumption, like the one in the US. But can we really trivialize and look down upon the idealistic beliefs of these people? Au contraire, it is the true definition of humanity and the antithesis to the Sheeple syndrome that we look at ourselves, our habits, our leaders, our idols, indeed our world and ask ourselves “Why?”