HELPING TO STOP PLASTIC AND PAPER BAGS
When the 5 Gyres team made it to the Azores after our North Atlantic marine debris investigation they took the opportunity to see who on the Faial (the island where we landed) worked on ocean issues and if anyone was working on plastic. This led them to give a presentation at the University of The Azores where we met researcher, Marcos Santos. Marcos works on tracking sea turtles and he’s noted in the necropsies he’s done on juvenile sea turtles that many have lots of plastic in their guts. Santos says that juveniles will eat anything looking for a meal, while adults are more particular.
Source: www.5Gyres.com
The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of our world’s oceans, waves and beaches. Founded in 1984 by a handful of visionary surfers in Malibu, California, the Surfrider Foundation now maintains over 50,000 members and 90 chapters worldwide.
Visit: The Surfrider Foundation
Just how long does it take for conventional plastics to completely break down? 500 years? 1,000? It’s a mystery. “No one has really measured how long it takes,” says Ramani Narayan, a professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at Michigan State University. What is known is that conventional petroleum-based plastics never really go away, even when they break down into pieces too small to be seen with the naked eye. Some new plastics are designed to degrade (not to be confused with biodegrade—more on that in a sec) in a matter of weeks when exposed to the elements, but that doesn’t mean they’re truly gone.
But broken down plastics are better than litter, right? Wrong. In fact, plastics often create more environmental harm when broken down than when intact. This is most evident in the oceans, home to billions of pieces of disintegrating plastic and preproduction pellets called nurdles, which can work their way back up the food chain to humans.
They’re pretty neat: Microorganisms can convert biodegradable plastics into water, carbon dioxide, and biomass—with no nasty chemical leftovers. However, there is a lot of confusion surrounding these ecofriendlier plastics—some of it intentional. “This word ‘biodegradable’ has become very attractive to people trying to make quick bucks on it,” explains Narayan, who helped develop biodegradable corn-based plastic. Some companies, he says, are making conventional plastic that degrades quickly and then throwing around claims about biodegradability that are unproven or just too good to be true.
This claim, which now shows up on everything from water bottles to trash bags to Discover’s “biodegradable PVC” credit cards, is “disingenuous at best,” says Narayan. Usually, nothing biodegrades in a landfill. But if biodegradable plastics do break down in this oxygen-free environment, they’ll emit methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2.
Currently, truly biodegradable plastics are mostly used for eating utensils, food containers, and compostable bags. To make sure you’re getting the real deal, look for products with the Biodegradable Products Institute logo, which means they’ve been certified to comply with strict scientific standards.
“The public thinks that biodegradability means ‘If I throw it away, it will completely go away,’” says Narayan. “They don’t even know what ‘going away’ means.” Real biodegradable plastic should be sent to a commercial composting facility, where it will spend its final days being eaten by microbes. But here’s the catch: In 2007, only 42 communities nationwide offered compost collection. (Seventeen were in California.) And though some biodegradable plastics can be recycled, no curbside recycling program will take them. So before you buy biodegradable plastics, make sure you can help them “go away” the right way.
Source: MotherJones.com
Fact: No. In fact, plastic bags have not been banned anywhere, not even in San Francisco. San Francisco is requiring that consumers use compostable plastic bags instead of 100% recyclable bags. Contrary to popular belief, there is a growing movement to increase access to recycle plastic bags – not eliminate them. New Jersey, Connecticut, and cities in California have all taken recent action to table legislation that would ban certain types of plastic bags and instead are now looking to implement plastic bag recycling programs.
Fact: Plastic bags are 100% recyclable and for all environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste – those of paper bags are significantly greater than that of plastic grocery bags:
• Plastic bags use 40% less energy to produce and generate 80% less solid waste than paper1
• Paper bags generate 70% more emissions, and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.2
• Even paper bags made from 100% recycled fiber use more fossil fuels than plastic bags3
Fact: The item most frequently encountered in landfills is paper—on average, it accounts for more than 40% of a landfill’s contents.4 Newspapers alone take up as much as 13% of landfill space.5
Cigarette butts, chewing gum, and candy wrappers account for about 95% of all litter in the English-speaking world.6 Education, as well as responsible use and disposal of all materials and products, is the key to reducing litter.
Fact: Virtually nothing – not paper, food, plastic or even compostable or bio degradable products – decompose in today’s landfills, because they are actually designed to be as stable and dry as possible. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project, has shown that when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.
Fact: Plastic bags are extraordinarily energy-efficient to manufacture. Less than .05% of a barrel of oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the US while 93% – 95% of every barrel of crude oil is burned for fuel and heating purposes.7 Although they are made from natural gas or oil, plastic bags actually consume less fossil fuels during their lifetime than do compostable plastic and paper bags.8
Fact: In order to breakdown, compostable bags must be sent to an industrial composting facility, not backyard piles or municipal composting centers. There are very few of these facilities in the U.S. and where these facilities are not available, compostable bags will sit in landfills because they can’t be recycled.
Fact: Since paper bag production has more negative environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste than plastic grocery bags, they’re not a solution. Recycling and proper disposal of all products would make sure that any threat to the environment, including wildlife, would be reduced.
Fact: Recycling does work. The problem is not everyone knows that plastic grocery bags are 100% recyclable and not everyone has access to plastic bag recycling in their community. A national at-store plastic bag recycling program would bring the recycling solution to everyone and increase rates. One Southern supermarket chain has such a program, and recycles more than 20% of the volume of plastic bags that it provides to customers.
Fact: The price of not recycling them is high. Recycling can help save resources and minimize the amount of waste going to landfills. Also, recycling helps reduce litter, as bags are contained and stored. Its worth noting that it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.9
Fact: Today there is a growing market for recycled plastic that didn’t exist 15 years ago. It’s also cheaper now to use recycled plastic than to obtain new materials, increasing potential for more recycling of used plastic bags. Recycled plastic grocery and shopping bags are currently being made into new consumer products such as clean new plastic shopping bags, outdoor decking and railing products.
1. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)
2. Ibid
3. REPA of Polyethylene and Unbleached Paper Grocery Sacks, Prepared for the Solid Waste Council, Franklin Associates Report, June 1990
4. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/msw/paper.htm)
5. U.S. EPA website, ( http://www.epa.gov/msw/faq.htm)
6. Litter Composition Survey of England, October 2004, produced by ENCAMS for INCPEN www.incpen.org/pages/userdata/incp/LitterCompSurvey24Jan2005.pdf).
7. Chemical Market Associates, Inc.
8. Évaluation des impacts environnementaux des sacs de caisse Carrefour (Evaluation of the Environmental Impact of Carrefour Merchandise Bags), Prepared by Price-
Waterhouse-Coopers/Ecobilan (EcoBalance), February 2004, #300940BE8, (www.ademe.fr/htdocs/actualite/rapport_carrefour_post_revue_critique_v4.pdf).
9. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)
This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.
In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away.
I have eliminated the need for most of my disposable items by incorporating reusable items into my everyday life. I bring my own reusable cup for coffee in the morning. I pack my own salad in a reusable container and take my bamboo To-Go Ware with me everywhere. When I have to choose between glass and plastic containers, I always choose glass. I fill up my reusable produce bags at the grocery store and bring them home in a reusable shopping bag. I’ve found that it is actually very convenient to have my own things on hand, and would not want to return to my previous throwaway habits. So much of environmental awareness comes through building self-awareness. This means becoming aware of your every day actions and how they impact the world. The closer we can connect to our landscape and our fellow inhabitants (both human and non-human), the better chance we have to create a sustainable and equitable future for all of the earth’s inhabitants to share.
Years after first learning about this issue I ask myself the same question: To use plastic or not to use plastic? I realize that the answer can’t feasibly be just a clear-cut “no” at this point in time. What has become clear, however, is that we should make and use objects in our world so that they match their purpose. If something is meant to be used for only a short period of time before it is discarded, then it should be able to truly biodegrade completely into the environment or be recycled into materials that retain their initial value.
What the plastics industry needs (and what we can help them do through lobbying for bans on disposable plastics) is creative destruction. Plastic products don’t need to be eliminated from society completely, but we need to make sure that their place in this world conforms to ecological principles and matches the purpose for which we make them. Plastics should be produced sparingly, for important purposes such as medical products or for items that are intended to survive for very long time periods. And plastics should be infinitely recyclable, so that every piece of plastic that is produced can be recycled to produce new products. We can use these materials, if we use them wisely.
Source: http://www.futurestates.tv
This flyer by the fashion illustrator Julia Durgee offers tongue-in-cheek responses you can employ when a store clerk tries to give you a plastic bag that you don’t want, and which will contribute to the planet’s ruin.
Source: good.is
Photo: juliadurgee.com
In the late 1850/60s, many scientists and inventors were focused on a new field of research: the creation of the modern day paper bag. It was such a hot topic that the original designer is unknown. The three possible inventors are Margaret Knight, William Goodale, and Francis Wolle.
UNION PAPER-BAG MACHINE COMPANY v. MURPHY.
The Union Paper-Bag Machine Company, assignee of William Goodale, to whom letters-patent No. 24,734, for an improvement in machines for making paper-bags, were issued July 12, 1859, and subsequently extended, brought this suit to restrain Merrick Murphy and R. W. Murphy from infringing said letters. The respondents justified under letters-patent No. 146,774, issued Jan. 27, 1874, to Merrick Murphy.
Letters-patent No. 24,734, bearing date July 12, 1859, were granted to William Goodale, for new and useful improvements in machinery for making paper-bags, as more fully described in the specification. Patents at that date were granted for the period only of fourteen years; but the record shows that the same was duly extended for the further term of seven years from the expiration of the original term, and that the patentee, on the 14th of July, two days subsequent to the extension of the patent, by an instrument in writing, sold and assigned all his right, title, and interest in the patent to the complainants, who instituted the present suit. What they charge is that the respondents are making and using the patented improvement, the title to which they acquired by virtue of the aforesaid written assignment.
Full story here
The EPA has stated that it takes 13 to 17 trees to make one ton of paper bags and that 955,000 tons of paper bags were used in the United States in 1997. That’s 13 to 17 million trees per year. As the reports discussed below make clear, logging and deforestation are major contributors to CO2 emissions. If paper bag usage is increased, tens of million additional trees will have to be chopped. In the plastic versus paper debate, anti-plastic bag activists have lost sight of this issue. Paper bags contribute 3.3 times more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic bags.
The Environmental Paper Network (EPN) has published a comprehensive report entitled: “The State of the Paper Industry.” The EPN states in the report as follows:
The paper industry’s activities – and our individual use and disposal of paper in our daily lives—have enormous impacts. These include loss and degradation of forests that moderate climate change, destruction of habitat for countless plant and animal species, pollution of air and water with toxic chemicals such as mercury and dioxin, and production of methane—a potent greenhouse gas—as paper decomposes in landfills, to name just a few.
One of the most significant, and perhaps least understood, impacts of the paper industry is climate change. Every phase of paper’s lifecycle contributes to global warming, from harvesting trees to production of pulp and paper to eventual disposal.
The climate change effects of paper carry all the way through to disposal. If paper is landfilled rather than recycled, it decomposes and produces methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. More than one-third of municipal solid waste is paper, and municipal landfills account for 34 percent of human related methane emissions to the atmosphere, making landfills the single largest source of such emissions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified the decomposition of paper as among the most significant sources of landfill methane.
According to the report:
* Plastics contribute 4% of toxic emissions
* Paper contributes 12% of toxic emissions
According to the report at page 5, discards in the U.S. Municipal solid waste streams by material are as follows:
* Plastics 16%
* Paper and paperboard 25%
The Daily Green has summarized the EPN report. Some of its observations are as follows:
1. Forests store 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important “carbon sinks” that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)
2. Half the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what’s left has been seriously degraded.
3. 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
4. The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions.
5. If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases — the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.
6. Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste).
7. Municipal landfills account for one third of human-related methane emissions (and methane is 23-times more potent a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide).
Source: savetheplasticbag.com
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Some polyester bags cost as low as $5 each, however they are made from a non renewable resource, oil. Plus, when they are discarded they last in the landfill just as long as plastic bags. This is not the solution to the problem of plastic bags.
Nothing we buy will last forever, that’s why we must choose a bag that will biodegrade when trashed. Who cares that they fold into pouches? The minor convenience is no reason to turn our backs on the environment.
Its cheap to use Polyester but the environment and our health is paying heavy price for it. Polyester, also called dacron, terylene, vycron etc, was introduced from the 1950s. Polyester is more sensitive than cotton for laundering. Because of its hydrophobic nature, it has a poor affinity for dyestuffs. Polyesters generate environmental impacts in their life cycle, including material extraction through their production and use to their disposal. In very general terms, the studies have shown the health hazards to consumers and the environmental risk arising from use of polyester textile in daily life.
Polyester fibre is produced from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. All the production steps of polyester required to convert petroleum into polyester fibre are energy intensive and result in significant emissions, including large amounts of a potent climate change gas – carbon dioxide. Air emissions which include nitrogen and sulphur oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOC), particulars, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, can cause significant health problems. Presence of toxic antimony in production is a concern from a human health perspective. Producing polyester also uses large amounts of water for cooling, as well as lubricants, which can become a source of contamination.
The textile industry is shared between natural fibers such as wool, silk, cotton, and man-made ones, the most common of which are synthetics fibers [Polyamide, acrylic] made from petrochemicals. Polyesters manufacture creates pollution and they are hard to recycle(with nylon taking 30 to 40 years to decompose).
Source: cazcointeriors.com
