You're leading with energy use but that's really not the point.
The point is that plastic takes many centuries to degrade, and we go through a lot of single-use plastic. For example, a disposable diaper takes >500 years to biodegrade.
It's nice to imagine all this plastic going into walled-off landfills that protect the rest of the earth and water from being contaminated, but in practice this is a myth. US localities are seeing an unsustainably growing amount of plastic contamination in local waterways and beaches, some of it visible, some of it not.
Incidentally, this doesn't mean you need to use a single-use paper bag instead of a single-use plastic bag. Instead, use a durable bag made out of any material you like. The phrase is "reduce -> reuse -> recycle". Recycling was never meant to be the foremost part of our sustainability efforts.
> You're leading with energy use but that's really not the point.
Isn't that the critical point? Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right? My assumption is that the energy used in industrial manufacturing is almost always non-renewable. If we're advocating for using paper bags over plastic bags, that means we're advocating for way more CO2 in the atmosphere. So what we should actually be advocating for is mandating that people reuse bags, bottles, and containers of all kind.
It's been a long time since I've been involved in chemistry, but my understanding is that extruded polymers like plastic bags, wraps and containers are almost always synthesized from waste products of fossil fuel refinement. If it wasn't for products like plastic wraps and bags, these "waste" gasses that are polymerized into plastics would be released into the atmosphere (especially in places without environment regulation or enforcement). The production of plastics at least traps those gasses into some solid state that we can then hope to maybe possibly bury in a landfill. I know it's ugly and pretty horrible, but from a climate perspective I'd go so far as to say that I'd prefer the plastic in a body of water than in the atmosphere.
> Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right?
We honestly don't know how bad micro-plastic is. Our experience with asbestos, another fibre that can penetrate cells, suggests "very bad" is on the list of potentials. We do know that it's in literally everything from dirt to water to air, and that it has circled the globe and got to places no human sets foot.
Like soil depletion and loss of insects, it's on the list of problems which aren't trendy to focus on right now, but might end up being really serious.
Microplastics are a good reason to make sure your plastic makes it to a landfill instead of the ocean more than a reason to give up plastic entirely. Of course, not every country has government provided waste disposal so to the extent that our rich world preferences get foisted onto developing countries by default I guess that is a valid reason to want to reduce plastic use.
But on the third hand locking up hydrocarbons in plastics while we're dealing with global warming seems like a positive good.
From what I understand, most microplastics in the environment are from washing clothing made of synthetic fibers[1] instead of natural products like cotton. It's rare to find something made from 100% cotton - it's usually a blend of mostly synthetic and sometimes natural fibers. Every time you wash them millions of microfiber plastics are released into the sewer system and there is no filter system capable of removing them so they end up permanently in the water cycle. They even end up in rain and snowfall[2], and have been found in organs of the human body[3] and of course wildlife.
> Microplastic pollution caused by washing processes of synthetic textiles has recently been assessed as the main source of primary microplastics in the oceans.
Also landfill becomes like a nuclear waste site, a burden on the future. You can't let it puncture, or be dug up (by humans or animals), or landslip, or flood. You have to cosset the damn thing in perpetuity, or until someone invents plastic-eating fungi (which dump it into the carbon cycle instead).
If we just abandon all landfills for 1000 years with no maintenance, how much of that plastic do you estimate will end up released into the sea during that time? Will it be enough to cause a bigger ecological problem than what's already happened with plastic in the sea today?
Importantly, where did you get your data from? It can't be just your imagination because that's only a tool to reinforce what you already believe.
Modern US landfills are lined and capped water tight, and have been for decades. Permitting is a thoroughly reviewed process, by dozens of federal, state, and local government offices, and hundreds of officials and engineers. Monitoring wells ensure compliance.
Even if it's microplastic in that landfill water, it's not getting to the ocean. Worst case is it's captured with the decomposing gases and condensate, and reprocessed at a refinery or incinerated.
The plastic is much better deposited in US landfills than shipped overseas, where it may be directly spilled into the ocean, or dumped into open fields for the poor to manually sift for the most valuable material, and then there's no telling where the rest of it will end up once it rains.
Plus landfill plastic is sequestered carbon.
Even places that certify plastic recycling into a new end user product are often making worthless items that are given away so that they can claim zero waste. The material ends up as construction fill for hydraulic detention infrastructure, playground surfaces and sports fields, or even those "green" children's toys. Or cheap fleeces. Lots and lots of cheap fleeces, blankets, and snuggies.
The exact places we don't want that plastic to end up.
Right, except that plastics do not biodegrade for hundreds of years or more. Will landfills continue to be as well managed as you claim they are now in perpetuity? Unlikely.
> Our experience with asbestos, another fibre that can penetrate cells, suggests "very bad" is on the list of potentials.
On the other hand, the issue seems to be animals ingest microplastics, mistaking them for food. The thing is, the vast majority of any environment is "not food". Tiny sand particles, dust, lignin, volcanic ash. If there is one thing life is phenomenally good at, it's distinguishing "not food" from food. Introducing a poison like pesticides into the environment, or wholesale environmental change like CO2 is doing - that could and indeed is wiping out a lot of species. But I have a hard time believing another source of "not food" will cause the same scale of damage.
Doubtful, not saying it's harmless but microplastics are everywhere, asbestos is not. We should research it but should not jump to the conclusion that it might be worse than a known horrible material.
Asbestos had clear links to various kinds of horrible conditions known all the way back to the early 1900s. Microplastics might increase some kinds of cancer and screw with some hormone signalling but we haven't seen such clear links yet to the same kinds of conditions.
The hunch that asbestos is really bad for human health is very old. The Greek geographer Strabo and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder both reported a sickness of the lungs in the slaves who wove asbestos into cloth.
> If we're advocating for using paper bags over plastic bags, that means we're advocating for way more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Not exactly. The point is not to use paper bag, but to use durable/persistent bag from any material (even plastic) as long as you can.
For example, I almost never use one-time plastic bags, because I have backpack, so when I go to a grocery store, all the things placed into the backpack.
In such case (from energy perspective) it's easier to peoduce 1 backpack (32l) for several years of daily use instead of paper/plastic/etc ONE-TIME bag.
Unfortunately, that approach doesn't work with other things. For example, it's impossible to buy yogurt not in one-time plastic package and we didn't find a "mass market" solution to that problem. Same goes for any other ONE-TIME package
Using your backpack for a year makes it maybe superior to single-use plastic if you don't use the single-use bag for trash later on: https://youtu.be/JvzvM9tf5s0
> For example, it's impossible to buy yogurt not in one-time plastic package and we didn't find a "mass market" solution to that problem. Same goes for any other ONE-TIME package
Actually there are completely package-free supermarkets in Europe (and probably the US, too) now, where you bring your own container and pay by weight. It's very niche now but I can imagine it increasing in popularity.
Every household in Australia has a yellow recycling bin that is collected every fortnight. Given that this article tells us there is no way to recycle plastic, what actually happens to all the trillions of plastic containers that pass through these yellow bins?
> it's impossible to buy yogurt not in one-time plastic package and we didn't find a "mass market" solution to that problem.
In Nordics most yoghurt is sold in one-liter Tetra Pak style cartons, similar to milk. I've noticed it's next to impossible to find these in Central Europe though, for whatever reason.
Is there a recycling process for Tetra Pak products?
I know they’re made from recyclable products, aluminium and paper, but they’re also an awkward combination of glossy paper glued to aluminium, which—last time I checked—were sent directly to landfill here.
Tetra Paks aren't put to generic waste, they go in a semi-specific packaging materials bin that depends on country. I assume almost all of them are incinerated for energy.
Here’s the Tetra Pak website about recycling for Australia, where it goes on for a bit to vaguely avoid saying they go to landfill as the aluminium isn’t a sufficiently concentrated source, and nobody cares to reuse the low grad paper that could be reclaimed.
In Nordics a large part of household waste is incinerated for energy, I don't have recent numbers but 50% already in 2015 in Finland and Sweden. In addition some part is of course recycled/composted (glass, paper, metal, bio). Landfills get just a tiny slice.
> extruded polymers like plastic bags, wraps and containers are almost always synthesized from waste products of fossil fuel refinement
That's almost completely false.
It obviously depends on the kind of plastic. PE and PP are made from ethene and propene, which are indeed byproducts of fuel refining. But demand far outstrips supply now, so these are now made on purpose. PS is made from styrene, which is not a byproduct. It is made from low-value chemicals, so it's upgraded waste. PET is made from terepthalic acid, which is very much not a waste product of any process.
Even if there were any waste products from fuel refining, they would certainly not be vented. They'd be burned as fuel. Which is also a sensible thing to do with waste plastics. (Someone is going to object that this releases CO2. It does. Burning fuel releases CO2. We can come back to this point once we longer burn coal or methane for energy.)
> PE and PP are made from ethene and propene, which are indeed byproducts of fuel refining.
When we're talking about things like plastic bags and wraps, aren't we talking about PE/PP?
> Even if there were any waste products from fuel refining, they would certainly not be vented. They'd be burned as fuel.
This makes a lot of sense. But what if a refinery is not equipped to do this? What if the refinery is in a place with poor or non-existant environment regulation/enforcement?
> But demand far outstrips supply now, so these are now made on purpose.
This is the kicker. So how do we make PP/PE when supply of precursors from crude refinement is not sufficient?
> PS is made ... PET is made from ...
I shouldn't have used the word extruded, I guess? I was thinking more about PE/PP.
> So what we should actually be advocating for is mandating that people reuse bags
Except that many reusable bags are likely a waste of resources:
Danish study: "polypropylene bags (most of the [] reusable bags found at supermarkets) should be used 37 times paper bags should be used 43 times, cotton bags should be used 7,100 times."
UK study: "paper bags should be used three times low-density polyethylene bags (the thicker plastic bags commonly used in supermarkets) should be used four times, non-woven polypropylene bags should be used 11 times, cotton bags should be used 131 times."
A simple approximation for environmental damage is the cost in $. If a plastic bag costs 1c, and a jute bag costs $2, then
you can guess crossover point is 200 usages (weekly shopping for 4 years to reach breakeven also presuming you value your extra time and hassle at zero).
Reusable bags are a huge waste IMHO.
I dropped a bottle of wine the other day because I didn't have a plastic carry bag - cost equivalent of 1000 plastic bags... Arrrrghhh!
7100 times is quite a lot. If used once a day, that would mean approx. 20 years of use.
When I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, we mostly had cotton shopping bags for everyday use. Nicely printed, colorful plastic bags were a bit of a luxury. But our cotton shopping bags rarely lasted more than two or three years. The wear and tear was significant. A lot of food comes in edg-y or point-y packaging, which is not friendly towards the bags.
> Isn't that the critical point? Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right?
Energy is important, but the energy consumption of a grocery bag is small compared to the energy consumption of most of the things in the grocery bag, and if you drive a car to the grocery store, the energy consumption of the car for the roundtrip (~0.3 kWh per mile).
I'd say for grocery packaging the ecological impact should be the bigger concern.
Honestly the solution is easy, change the $0.10 grocery bag surcharge to $1.00 and people will stop using single-use grocery bags tomorrow. $0.10 is not enough for people to care.
Even better solution. Charge $100 to go into the grocery store and that will greatly reduce people driving to stores, shopping and using single-use bags.
I'm assuming you are being facetious in order to highlight an alleged absurdity of the suggestion. Though in reality the suggestion seems quite sensible to me.
Where I am, we've been under the effect of a pretty steep tax on plastic grocery bags that get noticeably passed along to the consumer. The result, from my personal experience, seems to have been a widespread adoption of tote bags. These last a very long time, 5+ years in my own experience. It has not resulted in a decrease in supermarket visits, to the best of my knowledge.
I feel these sorts of arguments are just excuses to be inefficient.
In many office kitchens, I see so many people using the hot water to wash when the cold would suffice. Using massive amounts of washing liquid when you only need a little. Keeping the faucet on while they scrub their dishes.
And depending on your household situation, you can do dishes for a family of 4 in under 30 mins. Cleaning a single plate during the day takes seconds. Or even just learn to pack your dishwasher properly. Let’s not pretend that doing a few menial tasks everyday is what’s stopping you from being that extra bit more efficient.
Unfortunately there is no winner take all solution for environmental impacts, it is a many-fronted theater.
So better plastics solidified and made useful than released as fumes, but your decisive line of argument omits the carbon sequestration possible with large-scale paper for one thing (just not the kind that spills outflow directly into waterways), and the general degradation of the living oceans.
If what we are talking about is energy use, then we are probably wasting our time talking about bags, because the goods the bags are carrying probably take an order of magnitude more energy to generate. Refuse and energy consumption are separate but related problems.
Yes I keep preaching this to anyone that will listen. It was THREE Items that form the phrase. And we just don’t reduce or reuse given how easy it is to buy more stuff.
At my house, we have a whole “fixin’ stuff box” full of items that broke but not seriously enough that maybe we can figure out how to fix them. I started this to teach my kids that we can repair stuff rather than throw it. I still have really fond memories of fixing things around the house in India in the 1980s with my grandpa. Although those days most fixes involved either adding oil, or taking things apart and cleaning the dust.
What does make me happy is now, sometimes when I say let’s throw something my 7 year old son says “come on let’s at least try to fix it first”. We have fixed his headphones twice by taking it apart and re-soldering wires that came loose. And it feels so satisfying to know you can bring something back to life.
It’s had mixed results. The biggest pushback even with me is time. Do I have the time to fix that broken pencil sharpener or can I solve this in 2 mins on Amazon because I have 50 other things to do.
And more often than not the 2 mins wins.
I think if fixing things was more socially present (you saw more people around you doing it), more people would do it.
This becomes a reinforcing problem as we purchase cheap solutions in the quick fix option, ones that are more likely to break, be more difficult to repair, and more likely to let us to another quick fix.
This doesn't detract from your main point, but there is a third alternative to fixing a purpose-made pencil sharpener vs buying a new one - use a knife.
This is what I did as a child whose family had no access to such luxuries. Of course, you can't bring this solution to school.
Uh that just releases more carbon dioxide faster, how is that a solution to anything other than maybe landfill issues? I would personally say that's worse as it is contributing to our biggest problem of all which is climate change. At least if it's buried it takes centuries to break down
Well we already burn the same fossil fuels for power… instead of an oil fired plant you add an extra step and turn that oil into packaging for a while before burning it. As long as some of your power comes from fossil fuels it would really seem to be carbon neutral because a similar amount of carbon was going to be burned anyway.
And the amount of plastic actually burned is quite small when you compare it to everything else.
Depending on the technology used by whichever incinerator, they do go through multiple passes and filtration steps but I am not actually sure what that does about CO2 emissions.
The extra processing done is to clean up incomplete combustion and particulate. CO2 is the end of the line. The CO2 molecule is very similar in size to N2 and O2.
It can be separated and captured in various ways, but they are quite energy intensive (though occasionally power plant output will be used as input for industrial CO2 "manufacture" where they separate, liquefy or freeze it, and then sell it for whatever purpose.
You seem to be directly contradicting your parent commenter about US releasing plastic into the sea. Even if it's growing, do you still agree that it's insignificant compared to less developed countries?
A lot of the arguments against plastic miss this anyway. They say "don't put it in the landfill" but the landfill is exactly where it's walled-off and safe. If it was about getting into waterways, it'd be "Put your plastic in the landfill instead of the street".
Why does it matter how long it takes to break down? As long as it's secure, it'll just sit there doing no harm. Is there any evidence that landfills will one-day release their contents on a large scale and cause an environmental problem? Presumably that will happen in some post-apocalyptic world where people no longer bother to maintain things and the apocalypse will be tolerable but not the plastic?
We have no shortage of space for landfills. As the OP mentioned, we manage or garbage well in North America and most of it is disposed properly. I would argue the opposite of you, the energy consumption of production and shipping is more important than if it's biodegradable quickly or not.
There are a lot of factors to consider in reusable versus single use. For example, this video says you need to use a cotton reusable bag 7100 times to offset its environmental impact versus single use plastic bags. It goes into many other considerations too, including disposal problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0
Perhaps if bags are made from new material, but it's not difficult to sew a bag out of old clothes, say, or other fabric that would otherwise end up in a landfill. In any case, the bag you already have is almost certainly better than a new, disposable one.
I agree with all that. But it is interesting to see what the implications can be. I once went to a conference where they made an announcement that they were being green by giving every attendant a canteen to fill up with water instead of using disposable cups. But I'd be willing to bet many of those canteens went into the trash right after the conference, and thus they probably accomplished the exact opposite of what they were after.
This is a familiar frustration. I've entered a number of recreational cycling events, and every time I do they'll give you another cheap drawstring bag, water bottle, and t-shirt that I will almost certainly never wear or use. I already have better versions of all of these things that I've been using for years. But the incentive, even when it's explicitly stated as environmentally conscious - is more likely promotional, and often times driven by outside sponsors anyway.
It takes a big mindset shift that is not easily made in a consumer-focused capitalist economy. It's easy to sell more, cooler things as a solution to a problem, but if consumption is part of the problem it's hard to incentivize doing more with what you already have, which was always the first two of the three R's.
That's also why these kind of corporate green campaigns (and for that matter many other pro-social campaigns) don't really work. It's not even that the people putting them on don't believe in what they're doing. It's just that they are constrained by the capital earning goals of the corporations, which will push back against any work that would undercut both the power/profit of the company individually and the capitalist system undergirding it and its place in the world.
On greenhouse gas emissions alone, reusable plastic bags need to be used about ten times to be as good as single-use plastic, and cotton bags over 100 times. Paper bags are no better than single-use plastic.
On total environmental impact, single-use plastic pulls further ahead: paper bags are much worse, reusable plastic bags need to be used 50 times to match single-use plastic (achievable with focus and effort), and cotton bags take thousands of uses to equal single-use plastic.
And if you reuse single-use plastic bags for trash bags, they are far superior to all alternatives.
Does this account for the fact that reusable bags are larger capacity and stronger than single use bags (don't need doubling).
Also, single use bags , as the name suggests, are used in far far higher quantities than trash bags. A week means 1 trash bag but a dozen grocery bags.
Anyway, regardless of that your shopping bag is, most of the plastit is inside it, wrapping your individual items...
There have been numerous cases of finding plastic waste in some fish, and because it doesn't decay organically it can form blockages in their digestive tracts. Whatever they're using in 300 years, they'll still be finding plastic in oceans and rivers(absent a massive clean up program)
> A bit of plastic — to a fish gut - is no different than a pebble, chunk of coral, bit of bone, etc.
There's reasonable empirical evidence that plastic accumulation in fish causes them to reproduce less than they otherwise would[1]. The prevailing theory is that most plastics leach at least some of their chemicals in seawater.
Don’t worry, the only people saying that are the scientists who are studying it.
“When Browne experimented with blue mussels back in 2008, many researchers thought animals would just excrete any microplastics they ate, like “unnatural fiber,” as Browne called it—but he wasn’t so sure. He tested the idea by placing mussels in water tanks spiked with fluorescent-tagged microplastic particles smaller than a human red blood cell, then moved them into clean water. For six weeks he harvested the shellfish to see if they had cleared the microplastics. “We actually ran out of mussels,” Browne says. The particles “were still in them at the end of those trials.”
The mere presence of microplastics in fish, earthworms and other species is unsettling, but the real harm is done if microplastics linger—especially if they move out of the gut and into the bloodstream and other organs. Scientists including Browne have observed signs of physical damage, such as inflammation, caused by particles jabbing and rubbing against organ walls. Researchers have also found signs ingested microplastics can leach hazardous chemicals, both those added to polymers during production and environmental pollutants like pesticides that are attracted to the surface of plastic, leading to health effects such as liver damage. Marco Vighi, an ecotoxicologist at the IMDEA Water Institute in Spain, is one of several researchers running tests to see what types of pollutants different polymers pick up and whether they are released into the freshwater and terrestrial animals that eat them. The amount of microplastics in lakes and soils could rival the more than 15 trillion tons of particles thought to be floating in the ocean’s surface alone.”
It’s from the article (and study cited therein) cited in the post I responded to.
Apparently few actually read the ‘evidence’ they knee-jerk cite to.
Specifically, the Brown study examined mussels who were kept in containers with 0.51 g/L of micro particles of plastic. And, surprise surprise, some of the micro particles found their way into the mussels. Shocker. That density of particles is nonexistent in nature. But, as long as you get the grant money...
The same Scientific America article also makes this claim:
“In a surprising study published in March, not only did fish exposed to microplastics reproduce less but their offspring, who weren’t directly exposed to plastic particles, also had fewer young, suggesting the effects can linger into subsequent generations.”
But, if you read the study it (a) has nothing to do with fish, but rather plankton, and (b) the exposure to micro plastics INCREASED the number of offspring!
People should read the studies. But, it’s easier to smugly downvote.
Still, it is mostly a cosmetic problem, while we are supposed to believe that global warming will kill us all in a short amount of time. So the priorities should be clear.
The point is that plastic takes many centuries to degrade, and we go through a lot of single-use plastic. For example, a disposable diaper takes >500 years to biodegrade.
It's nice to imagine all this plastic going into walled-off landfills that protect the rest of the earth and water from being contaminated, but in practice this is a myth. US localities are seeing an unsustainably growing amount of plastic contamination in local waterways and beaches, some of it visible, some of it not.
Incidentally, this doesn't mean you need to use a single-use paper bag instead of a single-use plastic bag. Instead, use a durable bag made out of any material you like. The phrase is "reduce -> reuse -> recycle". Recycling was never meant to be the foremost part of our sustainability efforts.