Plastic bags are GREENER....

June 25, 2012 by Polythene Pam | 2 Comments

THEY ARE! THEY ARE! THEY ARE!

Environment Agency a UK government body has done a
Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags Report SC030148
The report concludes that a reusable cotton bag would have be reused 393 times to be a green as a plastic bag.

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This, claim some plastic bag makers, proves their product is the greenest.

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Here are their maths….

It takes less resources to make one plastic bag then it does to make a reusable cotton bag.

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Therefore a cotton bag has to be used 131 times before it equals a plastic bag.

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If the plastic bags are then reused twice (so they are used 3 times in total) the cotton bag has to be used 393 times before it equals the environmental impact of the 131 polythene bags.
If the plastic bag is reused as a bin liner ( which is what most people do with them) then it is 327 times.

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Erm sorry but do your cotton bags fall apart after 393 uses? Fall apart so badly they cannot be repaired? Mine don’t.

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I have fair-trade organic string bags which I bought back in 2006 when I started my boycott. I have had them for  6 years now.

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Here are my maths….

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Say I use one string bag 3 times a week. That would be for the weekly supermarket shop, the trips to the local butchers and green grocers, going to the pub to get plastic free take-outs, town on a Saturday to get library books, clothes, and bits and bobs, bringing food home from the takeaway (and yes we take our own pans), carrying cabbages from the allotment, carrying cushions and all the other gubbins you use a bag for.

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So say I use one string bag a very conservative 3 times a week over 52 weeks, (and the bag does go away with us and has been all round the world ),  I will use that bag at least 156 times a year in total

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Over 6 years  I have used that bag 936 times.

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If I didn’t have a reusable bag I would have to have used 312 plastic bags in that time –and used them a total of 3 times each, (I would NEVER reuse plastic bags as bin liners).

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That’s 312 bags in the trash to be disposed of.

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They will most likely be landfilled or incinerated. There is a very low chance they will be recycled.

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Some of them might have blown off the truck during transportation. Wind blown refuse is a documented cause of litter. Here’s a picture of bags in trees in England.

Because we spend a lot of time abroad, some of them would have gone into bins in isolated villages in remote parts of the world – places that lack a waste collection service. Those bins would have been emptied into the river. Here’s a picture of plastic bags in a river in Myanmar.

My cotton bag is already 3 times greener than the plastic alternative.

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That bag is good for a good few years yet. It got a hole once but I sewed it up. That was due to rats not age.

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Other considerations…

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You can get so much more in a string bag then a plastic bag. My string bag is worth at least 2 plastic bags for capacity.

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The study is talking about woven cotton bags and mine are cotton string bags.

My cotton produce bags, made from woven cotton and bought at the same time as my string bags, are still going strong.

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When my bag does fall apart I will reuse it as a net to grow beans up then eventually compost it in my own compost bin.

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And as my dear old mucker over at The Flotsam Daries points out, if I made my own reusable bags out of a recycled t shirt it would equal 0 plastic bags. I am going to  that as soon as my string bags give out – though no sign of that so far.

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More information….

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Read the report your self right here

Take your own bags- the clever baggers guide to shopping is right here.

The Flotsam Diaries – a great read

Why we don’t use bin liners

Composting – being revised

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Want to reduce your plastic rubbish? Check out these plastic free products sourced as part of our boycott  >>>The A-Z plastic free index<<< 

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