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This seems kind of odd to me, the idea that using 50 plastic bags is environmentally equivalent to one plastic-based reusable bag. The "environmental impact" i

This seems kind of odd to me, the idea that using 50 plastic bags is environmentally equivalent to one plastic-based reusable bag. The "environmental impact" is defined pretty broadly, but intuitively it feels like I'd rather have the one bag go to the dump when it wears out than have 50 flimsy plastic ones blowing about or getting into every nook and cranny. As always of course, while it's good to be aware of your own wasteful habits, they're probably a rounding error compared with industrial and commercial waste, things like enormous fishing nets and lines being cut off in the ocean, or pallets of packages being wrapped by hundreds of feet of plastic wrap for transport.

johnrob 4y ago
The challenge is that while we (ideally) all strive to reuse that bag 50 times, we may fail unintentionally and end up a net negative.
RC_ITR 4y ago
Western landfills are pretty good at physically containing trash especially plastic. Our current crisis was because we more or less decided “shipping plastic away” was as good as “recycling plastic.” So we stopped burying our plastic in a very safe way, and instead we burned fossil fuels to ship it to Asia, where they just let it get into the ocean. If we just do back to burying our plastic (and trying really hard to collect it all in the trash stream), we’d all be better off.
Sankozi 4y ago
"Environmental impact" formula is totally subjective and unscientific. You could easily create another one which would put mentioned bags in a different order. For example cotton bags critique often involves mentioning how much water is needed to produce it. But is it really a problem on the planet mostly covered by water? By tweaking the formula you can put cotton bags where you want on list like that.
crdrost 4y ago
It is an extremely counterintuitive result, I agree. The basics are that your standard grocery store plastic bag is made of a very very small amount of plastic, and thus a very very small amount of oil went into it. The environmental costs of travel were amortized across many many more of them because they travel in these massive multi-packs to be used in bulk, and so forth. I am not sure how disposal enters into the mix, precisely... I’d think the comparison is “here is how much crude oil is needed to make the gas you need to chainsaw down a tree to make a paper bag and ship it to the store, versus how much crude oil is needed to make and ship the plastic one.” That is, the assumption is that they both get sent to the same landfill, compressed into a small little cube, and shuffled off to some corner similarly... No thoughts about plastic bags blowing in the breeze. In a related note, when I was a kid I remember being shown, as we passed, some recycling center... And I remember being scandalized about the dark smoke being belched out into the air. I am told that they have made great gains since I saw that, so that glass and metal recycling is now fairly clean, but that plastic recycling is still somewhat dicey in whether the recycling process yields a net environmental benefit. I have no idea if that's accurate though, it's a very faint memory.
nabilhat 4y ago
Check the single pdf under the sources tab [0]. Search for 'waste bin bag'. It's assumed that the LDPE bag will always be reused as a garbage bag, and that 'permeable' bags will not. Effectively, this assumes that every single time you (re)use whatever you have on hand to carry your groceries home in that's not a flimsy new LDPE bag, an entire sturdy plastic garbage bag is destroyed. By this math, carrying home your groceries in absolutely nothing is substantially more harmful than using a new LDPE bag. Just for fun, if we take this math to its logical extreme, the least environmentally harmful thing to do is to take as many LDPE bags as you can carry all stuffed full of nothing but more empty LDPE bags. [0] https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...
SamBam 4y ago
I had the same thought that the litter created by single-use plastic bags is worth weighing in the equation. However, a look at a similar study in the US (Life Cycle Assessment of Grocery Bags in Common Use in the United States [1]) points out that "A compilation of all of the statistically-based studies of litter in the U.S. and Canada over an 18 year period shows consistently that “plastic bags” (which includes trash bags, grocery bags, retail bags and dry cleaning bags) make up a very small portion of litter, usually less than 1%. " So our vision of plastic bags getting into every nook and cranny may not be an accurate perception of reality. 1. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=cudp_environment https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
- masonic 4y ago
  >“plastic bags” (which includes trash bags, grocery bags, retail bags and dry cleaning bags) make up a very small portion of litter, usually less than 1% By mass (weight), not volume, area, visibility, or impact on wildlife.
  - SamBam 4y ago
    No, by number of pieces. > Stein analyzed 20 years of scientifically-designed, statistically based litter surveys in the U.S. and Canada and concluded that total plastic bag litter was less than 1% (by number of pieces). Combining these data with the estimated annual production of PRBs of 100 billion bags (U. S. International Trade Commission, 2009), and assuming that all of the plastic bag litter resulted from only one year’s production and use of PRBs, leads to the conclusion that less than 0.5% of PRBs end their life as litter
kkfx 4y ago
The point is another: we do need packaging in general, because we need to move stuff around and store them. Things we move and store have a separated lifecycle respect of their packaging and packaging have a cost. Now a cotton/manila/sisal/* bag if "less pollutant" per se than a plastic one, but cost much much more to be produced and I do not know in ecological term the impact not of cotton per se but enough plantations to satisfy the demand of bags. That's is. In the relatively recent past plastics was sold as environmentally friendly because with it, coming just from a liquid pumped from underground, we can avoid cutting soooo many trees, bamboos etc and soo much energy to process them just to make packaging. Now the refrain is the opposite. Long story short the point is not "this pollute more than that" but "on scale using this pollute more than that".

johnrob 4y ago

The challenge is that while we (ideally) all strive to reuse that bag 50 times, we may fail unintentionally and end up a net negative.

RC_ITR 4y ago

Western landfills are pretty good at physically containing trash especially plastic. Our current crisis was because we more or less decided “shipping plastic away” was as good as “recycling plastic.” So we stopped burying our plastic in a very safe way, and instead we burned fossil fuels to ship it to Asia, where they just let it get into the ocean. If we just do back to burying our plastic (and trying really hard to collect it all in the trash stream), we’d all be better off.

Sankozi 4y ago

"Environmental impact" formula is totally subjective and unscientific. You could easily create another one which would put mentioned bags in a different order. For example cotton bags critique often involves mentioning how much water is needed to produce it. But is it really a problem on the planet mostly covered by water? By tweaking the formula you can put cotton bags where you want on list like that.

crdrost 4y ago

It is an extremely counterintuitive result, I agree. The basics are that your standard grocery store plastic bag is made of a very very small amount of plastic, and thus a very very small amount of oil went into it. The environmental costs of travel were amortized across many many more of them because they travel in these massive multi-packs to be used in bulk, and so forth. I am not sure how disposal enters into the mix, precisely... I’d think the comparison is “here is how much crude oil is needed to make the gas you need to chainsaw down a tree to make a paper bag and ship it to the store, versus how much crude oil is needed to make and ship the plastic one.” That is, the assumption is that they both get sent to the same landfill, compressed into a small little cube, and shuffled off to some corner similarly... No thoughts about plastic bags blowing in the breeze. In a related note, when I was a kid I remember being shown, as we passed, some recycling center... And I remember being scandalized about the dark smoke being belched out into the air. I am told that they have made great gains since I saw that, so that glass and metal recycling is now fairly clean, but that plastic recycling is still somewhat dicey in whether the recycling process yields a net environmental benefit. I have no idea if that's accurate though, it's a very faint memory.

nabilhat 4y ago

Check the single pdf under the sources tab [0]. Search for 'waste bin bag'. It's assumed that the LDPE bag will always be reused as a garbage bag, and that 'permeable' bags will not. Effectively, this assumes that every single time you (re)use whatever you have on hand to carry your groceries home in that's not a flimsy new LDPE bag, an entire sturdy plastic garbage bag is destroyed. By this math, carrying home your groceries in absolutely nothing is substantially more harmful than using a new LDPE bag. Just for fun, if we take this math to its logical extreme, the least environmentally harmful thing to do is to take as many LDPE bags as you can carry all stuffed full of nothing but more empty LDPE bags. [0] https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

SamBam 4y ago

I had the same thought that the litter created by single-use plastic bags is worth weighing in the equation. However, a look at a similar study in the US (Life Cycle Assessment of Grocery Bags in Common Use in the United States [1]) points out that "A compilation of all of the statistically-based studies of litter in the U.S. and Canada over an 18 year period shows consistently that “plastic bags” (which includes trash bags, grocery bags, retail bags and dry cleaning bags) make up a very small portion of litter, usually less than 1%. " So our vision of plastic bags getting into every nook and cranny may not be an accurate perception of reality. 1. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=cudp_environment https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

masonic 4y ago
>“plastic bags” (which includes trash bags, grocery bags, retail bags and dry cleaning bags) make up a very small portion of litter, usually less than 1% By mass (weight), not volume, area, visibility, or impact on wildlife.
- SamBam 4y ago
  No, by number of pieces. > Stein analyzed 20 years of scientifically-designed, statistically based litter surveys in the U.S. and Canada and concluded that total plastic bag litter was less than 1% (by number of pieces). Combining these data with the estimated annual production of PRBs of 100 billion bags (U. S. International Trade Commission, 2009), and assuming that all of the plastic bag litter resulted from only one year’s production and use of PRBs, leads to the conclusion that less than 0.5% of PRBs end their life as litter

kkfx 4y ago

The point is another: we do need packaging in general, because we need to move stuff around and store them. Things we move and store have a separated lifecycle respect of their packaging and packaging have a cost. Now a cotton/manila/sisal/* bag if "less pollutant" per se than a plastic one, but cost much much more to be produced and I do not know in ecological term the impact not of cotton per se but enough plantations to satisfy the demand of bags. That's is. In the relatively recent past plastics was sold as environmentally friendly because with it, coming just from a liquid pumped from underground, we can avoid cutting soooo many trees, bamboos etc and soo much energy to process them just to make packaging. Now the refrain is the opposite. Long story short the point is not "this pollute more than that" but "on scale using this pollute more than that".