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>