The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has found that the widespread adoption of returning and reusing plastic packaging could help cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 69. Plastics were responsible for around 3.3 of global emissions, with the world emitting around 54.6 billion tonnes of CO2eq. One reusable plastic bag (LDPE) is equivalent to 6.92kg CO2e, or 35.2km of driving. Paper and cotton bags need to be reused three and 131 times respectively to ensure their global warming potential is lower than a typical plastic grocery bag.
Reuseable bags also reduce litter on land and in the ocean. Studies have found that bans on plastic bags in cities in the United States and Europe have reduced emissions associated with plastic bags. A bag footprint calculator helps determine how often you need to reuse alternatives to plastic bags to overcome their negative environmental impact.
The carbon footprint of a plastic bag refers to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, released throughout the lifecycle of the plastic bag, including its production. To have greenhouse gas emissions as low as a standard single-use plastic bag, one would need to reuse a certain grocery bag type at least seven times.
A paper bag emits 0.051 lbs of CO2 from manufacturing and disposal, and requires a gallon of water per bag, or 25 times the amount of water than a standard plastic bag. Plastic bags produce 7kg of municipal solid waste compared to 33.9kg for paper, and greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to 0.04 tons of waste.
The refinement of plastics emits an additional 184 to 213 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year. Landfills, where single-use plastic bags are used, are a significant source of waste.
📹 Which bag should you use? – Luka Seamus Wright and Imogen Ellen Napper
Explore the environmental impact of three types of bags— plastic, paper, and cloth— to find out how they’re made, used and …
Are reusable bags environmentally friendly?
Reusable bags offer several benefits, including reduced environmental impact, cost savings, and durability. Single-use plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose and often end up in landfills, oceans, and other natural habitats, harming wildlife. Reusable bags are also more cost-effective in the long run, as they can be used for years without the need for regular bag purchases. Retailers often offer discounts for customers who bring their own bags, and they are often made of high-quality materials, making them less likely to contribute to litter or pollution.
How much CO2 does 1 kg of waste produce?
The generation of one kilogram of non-recycled waste results in the emission of 700 grams of CO₂ into the atmosphere.
Are fabric bags bad for the environment?
The sustainability of bags depends on the frequency of use. Producing one plastic bag is more sustainable than producing one cotton bag, but repeatedly using a cotton bag until its last day is more sustainable. Reuse, reuse, reuse is always the answer to sustainability. Single-use paper bags, while recyclable, require more resources and energy to produce and transport. They also contribute to deforestation and air pollution. Despite the potential for recycling, the likelihood of a paper bag lasting for three uses is slim due to its low durability.
Is cloth bag eco friendly?
The use of cloth bags offers a number of advantages over the use of plastic bags. These include biodegradability, reusability, low maintenance, the ability to carry more weight than plastic bags, durability, and the availability of multiple design options. Furthermore, they can be repurposed as decorations, thereby offering an environmentally friendly alternative. Moreover, cotton bags can be repurposed as gift bags.
What is the carbon footprint of a cloth bag?
A study found that a cotton tote bag has a total carbon footprint of 598. 6lb of CO2e, compared to 3. 48lb for a standard plastic bag. This is due to the resources needed to grow cotton, such as energy, water, and fertilisers. Plastic, a by-product of the oil industry, requires no new resources to produce. The study’s focus on the bag’s carbon footprint does not consider the impact of the oil industry, which plastic is part of, or factors like land and marine pollution. It is recommended to consider the entire picture when considering eco-friendly items. The real problem with tote bags is that the production process is not considered.
How much CO2 emissions per kg recycled plastic?
The debate on net-zero targets for climate change has led to a focus on carbon emissions in various aspects of our lives. Recycled PET (rPET) has a significantly lower carbon footprint than virgin PET, producing only 620g of CO2 equivalent per kg of PET. This is due to the fact that rPET does not require the extraction of petrochemicals and requires less energy to produce. The process only requires small amounts of hot water for cleaning and electricity for sorting equipment. REMONDIS Taiwan has already upgraded its heavy oil boiler to a natural gas boiler to further reduce the carbon footprint of its rPET products.
The textile industry is the largest application of recycled PET, with 44 of the industry’s carbon emissions coming from raw material, and 86 from PET yarn. Replacing virgin PET with recycled PET can significantly reduce the carbon emission reduction potential of functional fabric products, reaching nearly 30. This potential is not possible without the plastic recycling industry.
How much CO2 emissions per kg of plastic burned?
The combustion of plastic materials releases carbon, a process known as “incineration.” This process emits 2. 9 kg of CO2e for every kg of plastic burned, making it comparable in its impact on the climate to the use of other fossil fuels as an energy source.
Are reusable bags really better for the environment?
Cotton, a resource-intensive crop, requires significant water usage and uses a significant amount of pesticides and fertilizers, causing nitrous oxide emissions and nitrates in waterways. The UNEP report suggests that a cotton bag needs to be used 50 to 150 times to reduce its environmental impact compared to a single-use plastic bag. A 2018 Danish Environmental Protection Agency report suggested that a cotton bag should be used at least 7, 100 times to offset its environmental impact.
The report considered 15 environmental indicators, including climate change, ozone depletion, air pollution, water use, and land use. However, it suggested that a cotton tote should be reused at least 52 times, in line with the UNEP report.
How much CO2 do plastic bags produce?
A standard plastic bag emits 200 grams of carbon, equivalent to 1 kg of carbon dioxide for every 5 standard bags used. This is slightly lower than the amount emitted from driving 1 km in a gasoline-powered vehicle. In the United States, each person uses an average of 1 plastic bag daily, resulting in over 100 billion bags used in a year. This means the United States emits around 20 trillion kilograms or 20 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year just by consuming plastic bags. The exact carbon footprint of a plastic bag depends on several factors, including its weight, size, and the number of bags used.
What is the carbon footprint of a reusable plastic bag?
A website was created to provide a clearer perspective on the emissions of everyday products, but due to financial difficulties and increased work hours, the website has been struggling to keep updated and respond to requests. The website has received more attention than expected, and the creator is grateful for the support. If small donations could be received, it would help the creator allocate time for updating the project and responding to requests. Even a small amount could make a significant difference in keeping the project alive. The website aims to provide a clearer understanding of the emissions of everyday products.
How much is 1kg of CO2 emissions?
The quantity of carbon dioxide generated by operating a typical automobile is approximately 3. A distance of 7 km, with an estimated fuel consumption of half a litre of petrol per 100 km, is equivalent to the emission of 1 kg of carbon dioxide, which has a volume of approximately 1600 litres. This volume is comparable to that of a large beach ball with a diameter of slightly over 1 metre.
📹 The Greenest Grocery Bag
It seems like a simple question with a straightforward answer, but when you look at the total environmental impact of each type of …
I can’t imagine a greener bag than boomerang bags In Australia we have a project called “boomerang bags” where some stores have racks or bins of reusable bags available for people to use for free & if someone has too many reusable bags at home they can leave them on the racks for other people to use So the system doesn’t require people to remember their bags every time, they just need to bring the bags back once in a while when they accumulate a lot of them at their house When the racks are set up (before the public starts taking them and re-filling them etc) they are filled with bags made by volunteers from upcycled fabrics, like old curtains, clothes etc People will bring these ones back but also any reusable bags they’ve gotten from other stores etc So the whole system only uses bags made from materials that already existed and would have gone to waste, or bags that already existed It provides a solution for the consumers who want the convenience of bags waiting for them to use at the store AND it provides a solution for people who have already accumulated heaps of reusable bags, that they will never be able to use because they have so many of them It’s perfect
One easy solution to the problem of shopping bags is to not use them. Hear me out! After receiving a couple of heavy duty cardboard boxes that had been used for shipping produce, we started putting them in the car for shopping trips. When we go through the checkout, we ask the bagger not to put anything in a bag, but to put it all back in the cart. Then we offload the contents of the cart into the heavy duty cardboard boxes and make our way home. We haul the groceries into the house in the boxes and then, once they’re empty, set them aside until we go shopping again. These boxes are really, really tough. We’ve already used them over 100x and they still have a lot of life left to them. When they do start to fall apart, they will be recycled. No solution is perfect, of course, but we’ve found that this works well for us.
The mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” is in that order of actions. REDUCE the amount of production and use of environmentally harmful products. If you must use those products, REUSE them after using them. Lastly is RECYCLE. Recycle is last because it is costly and uses a lot of energy to recycle. The first two steps of reduce and reuse should be considered first.
The most important thing is not how much energy it is being used, it is the tiny plastic particles that are damaging the environment, the plastic bags wrapping on turtles, etc. Even though other choices might seem not as environmentally friendly during production, it is currently the only way we have on reducing plastic particles.
I would be really interested in a similar episode about clothing! There’s tons of sometimes contradictory information around, particularly about synthetic materials (do they release tons of microplastics every time you wash them? How bad a problem is that?), and it can be hard to find citations for things.
Good episode – thank you. This study was presented on NPR’s Planet Money, but I was glad to hear it/see it again. Counterintuitive but does seem to make sense when analyzed that reuseable cotton bags have a fairly high environment toll. Agree with many of the suggestions below – use a backpack if you already have one (have personally been doing this for ~30 years); use hemp bags; if you have a cotton bag use it a lot, hand down to kids, and recycle when finished; if you use plastic bags try and use several times and then finish life as a garbage bag, and… if the store will use their own boxes, great. Loved the homemade approach of using old jeans to make new bags – that’s maybe the best idea. I think the take home point is to be more conscious about what we are doing, and that even a seemingly simple environmental problem doesn’t have a simple one size fits all solution. Big picture – what we do with grocery bags is going to have a miniscule effect on climate change and environmental degradation. Reducing animal product consumption, clean energy and greener transportation will have a vastly bigger impact.
I would like to see impact comparisons on different types of cloth bags, as well. Because cotton is so resource intensive, but there’s so many other ways that I would assume would be better. Other materials like linen, hemp, or using recycled/waste clothing such as second hand clothes or fashion cast-offs (I know a fun tutorial on how to easily sew an only t-shirt in to a reusable bag). It’s complicated, sure, but there’s so many options that aren’t plastic and aren’t fresh, non-recycled cotton.
The best reusable bag for your groceries is a pannier that you attach to your bike that you ride to the grocery store OR a bag on wheels that you use to walk to and from the grocery store. The greenhouse gas emissions you save by not driving there in a car more than make up for the production emissions from the bags.
What I learned: I was big-brained in buying a reusable plastic bag instead of a cotton one without even knowing it Guys, chill out in the replies. At least I was trying to do something for the environment instead of using hundreds of single-use plastic bags. Plastic may take hundreds of years to decompose but think about the damage that pesticides and other resources used to grow cotton has on the environment. Like the article said: it’s complicated. Also, I literally said nothing about having a problem with cotton bags. If you think you’ll use it enough to offset the impact, then go for it.
You know what the study didn’t factor in? Double bagging. Many grocers will automatically double (plastic) bag certain items for you like milk and meat. And they tend to underfill plastic bags. On the flip side, grocers tend to over stuff cotton canvas bags because they are more sturdy and people usually do not bring a million of them to the grocery store.
I really liked it when my grocery store offered their used boxes for us customers for free. I never used a bag, always used the cardboard boxes then recycled them, but the store stopped doing it because they were not profiting from it. Which sucks, because it is just skimping when you’re making people pay 5-10 cents a bag. Really wish they’d bring that back.
My dad has been using the same 3 cotton bags for as long as I remember. Since my memories start at age 5, let’s say 14 years. 14 years × 52 grocery trips a year (we go about once a week) that’s 728. If that doesn’t impact our plastic bag use, I don’t know what would. No, it isn’t the consumer’s fault at how much plastic pollution there is, but cotton bags are an easy habit to adopt and worthwhile (trips from car to home are lessened for one thing).
I have a set of grocery bags that are made from old denim jeans and coats that were cut up and sewn into patchwork-style bags. They are large and durable, and they look really cool. I also have smaller produce bags made from old beach towels cut into rectangles and sewn together, so I don’t have to use the single-use plastic produce bags in the grocery. They are similarly durable and though they are a little heavier than the plastic, I don’t mind the extra two pennies I pay when produce is measured by the pound. Both are machine-washable with regular detergent, which I do after every three trips to the grocery. I got them from a local shop that takes old textiles and turns them into recycled products. They were cheap too; the big bags were $4 each and the produce bags were $1 each. I’ve had those bags for literally decades — since 2002. They have all made hundreds of trips to the grocery store and not a single one of them has worn out. This feels like the best solution to me, since the cloth served the purpose of clothing a human being until it couldn’t meet that need anymore, then got a second life hauling food for me.
I had to rewind the article to make sure I hadn’t missed it, but what I was hoping to hear about wasn’t in the article: the impact of the production of oil/petroleum within the life cycle analysis of single use plastic bags. It’s an egregious oversight to include the production and agriculture for cotton bags or biodegradable plastic bags, and yet not everything it takes to obtain the material used to make single use plastic products. Regardless if the mistake is on the part of the researchers of the life cycle analyses, or the content creators of this article, this is a crucial piece in the puzzle that cannot and should not be forgotten.
As someone who as cared about their environmental impact and wants to structure their life in a way to care even more I really appreciated this episode. Totally blown away by cotton’s numbers and I always wondered about comparing paper to plastic. Maybe I could spin patching and repairing my old reusable bags as cooler than replacing them with new eco-snazzy bags. I’m not cheap, I’m hip. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I tend to reuse and repurpose old things. A lot of my sewing projects for school were made of old fabric scraps from my mom’s previous sewing projects. I’ve also made plenty of things out of old jeans and T-shirts. I buy most of my clothes from thrift stores, and that’s not just because it’s cheaper that way. I even bought my prom dress from a thrift store. When I get paper assignments returned after they’ve been graded, I’ll use the backs as scratch paper, shopping lists, etc. And once there’s nothing left that I can use it for, I’ll shred it up and compost it, along with any food that’s gone bad, and use the compost to replenish the soil for my garden. Some brands of lunch meat package their products in reusable plastic containers. While most people I know just throw them away, I use them to store leftovers, or to pack food on the go. Every time I go shopping, I save the plastic bags to use when I’m emptying out my bathroom garbage can, or cleaning the litter box. If the grocery bag gets a hole in it, I’ll keep it in a box. And once the box is full, I’ll take the bags and weave them together to make mats, and then I’ll donate those mats to various places. Homeless shelters, animal shelters, and anywhere else that is in need of a door mat but can’t afford to buy a new one. They also make for pretty good yoga mats too. I don’t have recycling in my area, but if I did, I’d use that too. For now, I just crush all the trash that I can’t reuse so that I can fit more inside a single trash bag.
I bought a bag-keeper last week (that fabric tube you hang up and stuff your plastic bags into so you can use them later) and was surprised how few options were made of thrifted materials. No one needs a brand-new cotton bag, and we’ve got so much extra cloth lying around thanks to fast fashion. Granted, 90% of it might not be usable for a bag (unless you want to spend labor and resources stitching scraps together), but some of it–larger clothes items, flour bags, sheets, pillowcases–is perfectly reusable for a tote. I do like my tote that is made of a cottony netting. It was from Amazon so obviously not a great eco-conscious manufacturing process, but that style of bag might be good too since it uses much less fabric. Bonus, that string could be made from chopped-up clothes.
In my household we use a fabric bag that was passed to me by my mother, who in turn got it from her father. It was made by my great-grandmother but she never actually used it, just gifted it to her son, so I don’t count her as a user. Still, that’s 3 generations of people using the same fabric bag. If that’s not eco-friendly I don’t know what is.
I’ve been using my ‘SAME’ cotton grocery shopping bags for over 25 years now. I’ve only lost 1 due to a damaged strap. They just need to last another 20 years. I guess I cant stop now… However, I am glad that I have not dumped around 4000 plastic bags to date in the garbage so they can sit in a land fill or end up in the ocean.
About 15 years ago I bought four sturdy shopping bags that are made from thick but flexible plastic. Handles and body are all of one piece. There are no sharp corners. They are so solid that they can stand on their own. They could easily be stood next to each other in the trunk of a car which I don’t have. They cannot be folded but can be stacked inside each other. Since the day I bought them I have used those bags for all my shopping and they are none the worse for wear. They are among my most cherished possessions, and I would not want to do without them. I expect to use them for the rest of my life, and when that is done I am sure they could serve another person for their entire life, provided they are handled with a bit of care. For the life of me, I cannot imagine a more perfect solution for the shopping bag problem.
Thanks for the thorough presentation, though I fear that it will not do for the majority of people who does not want to think that far. And what am I left with? Well, I used my reusables for years, literally. I have a Natural Grocer’s Bag at least 6 years old, beginning to disintegrate – but until it does give up, will continue to use it.
The whole time I was thinking “well what about the impacts to animal life?” There’s so many things we do you wouldn’t think pollute, but do. Balloons are actually one of the highest ones, and glitter (unless it’s made out of mica or synthetic fluorophlagopite) is the most abundant micro plastic source. There’s a lot to account for, I’m glad y’all are pointing out some of the things necessary to
An interesting problem that arose for my family was that once single use bags got taken away we needed to actaully buy single use bin bags. Which, beacuse of the way they are packaged could not be used to carry shopping ect. So while we had cut out one single use product it forced us to move to a different one.
It baffles me that people really use grocery plastic bags once and throw them away. Here in Brasil reusing them as trash bags and many other purposes is so common we invented something called puxa-saco (would translate it to “pull-a-bag”, but it also means “brown noser”, so the pun is lost in translation). It’s a crochet bag with 2 holes – in one hole you put the bags you just used, from the other you pull the oldest bags, when you need to use them – that people hang on walls and doors, usually in the kitchen or laundry room. We use them to pick poop from our pets, to carry liquids and food in our backpacks, and some people, like me, use them to separate clothes inside the bags (like clean clothes you’ll change to after exercising, a day on the beach or after work).
I don’t know how normal it is to throw away single use plastic bags for other people, but I grew up with them being reused many times over. My school lunches and snacks were in plastic bags. I’ve used them for carrying stuff to friend’s places. They are even used as garbage bags and recycling bags for each person’s rooms. “single use bags are never used less than twice in my life.
A charity I volunteer for, had a few thousand woven hemp bags donated to them by a kindly benefactor. The charity prides itself on being green, not just being seen to be green but actually being eco friendly. The bags are branded with the charity’s name, logo & charity number. However, the inside of the bag is thinly coated with a film of mailable plastic. Which seems to harden over a few months of use, which then flakes off. At first I saw this as some sort of marketing ploy. A seeming green bag that is initially waterproof but no. I found out, the bag’s material is thusly coated, because the initial customer is a manufacturer of printed bags. Their chosen inks are water based to be ‘green’ but said inks would bleed from one woven strand to another before the inks set. So the bag manufacturer buys the core materials as pre-coated giant rolls. They do this as they can’t know in advance, where exactly the ink/s will be needed to be printed on every bag, given that they make many different shaped bags and the print designs are many and varied. More cost effective, to simply have everything they buy-in, come pre-coated. They can then truthfully, if only partially true, state that they make eco friendly products; as they don’t manufacture the core material, they just buy it from a different manufacturer.
In this presentation, Hank fails to note that one use of a reusable bag is closer to 5 or more uses of single-plastic bags, because your reusable bag probably holds 5x the amount of groceries. Quite possibly more in America since double-bagging plastic bags was so common. The single use bag is bigger and a lot sturdier.
Maybe it was mentioned in the study but in the article there was no mention of the impact of extracting the oil used for the plastic bags (unless I missed it). It was phrased as if the oil was already just there to be used free of impact while there was a focus on the impact of farming the cotton for example. Also not mentioned you can repair heavier plastic bags and cotton bags which extends their life further beyond what the average lifespan may normally be.
So-called single-use plastic bags from a grocery store have many other uses. There they can be used as trash bags, they can be used to hold your dirty clothes from the gym, they can keep an extra pair of shoes in your car, it can be used to clean up after your dog, they can even be reused as shopping bags the next time you go to the store!
A couple years ago, we switched back to using single-use plastic bags when we do our grocery shopping. The reason is that we actually re-use those bags as trash can liners (for like the small trash cans in our bathrooms) and to pick up dog poops in our backyard, as opposed to buying separate single-use bags specifically for those purposes. We still have dog poop bags for when we take our dog on walks, but the fact that we don’t use those to clean up her poops in our backyard allows us to stretch the supply much longer. So unless a grocery bag is all torn up or dirty (from leakage from a meat product or something like that), we stash it in a cupboard in our garage and re-use it whenever we need a small bag for other trash. Hopefully, our plastic bag use is reasonably environmentally friendly.
Norwegian government also has a study on this based on norwegian recylcling and use. The base assumption was that plastic bags was used once to carry groceries and once to throw away trash. In norway we don’t have any big plastic bag littering problem though, like in other places so plastic bag was the run-away winner. It’s very easy to be caught doing things with little to no impact on the environment just to feel like you’re doing something.
I made myself linen totes. Last one was lasting for 3 years of everyday use. The handles became weak because of this, but the bag itself is doing great. I just have to replace them. Linen is a very noble material and looks stylish with ages. And you will use a bag like this literally forever. For fruits, veggies and other products I made myself nylon transparent bags. Yes they are not natural, but are very useful and you can use them for many many years.
I already kinda knew where this was going and I’ve got plenty of jute bags.. I have one, that I really like and carry basically everywhere.. but what I really hate is the fact that every company that goes into that direction of ‘we’re good for the environment, thanks for your support’ gives me a fricking jute bag!! I have about ten or fifteen of these jute bags, none of which I bought myself..
“Energy intensive” is only a negative when you are using fossil fuel for your energy. I haven’t read the Danish study but I find it difficult to believe a canvas bag made with recycled textiles and renewable/nuclear power is so much worse than plastic when disposal and the impact of oil extraction is considered.
The data presented at 5:14 is somewhat misleading. The 149 times refers to organic cotton according to the 2018 Danish EPA study. A conventional cotton bag only needs to be reused 52 times (pages 79-80 of the study). Since this distinction is made when considering all impact categories, it should perhaps be made here too
Re: tote bags needing to be reused hundreds of times. Isn’t that the whole point of tote bags? Who gets a tote bag and then doesn’t reuse it? I’ve had mine for… over ten years, maybe 15. I use them almost every day – if not to shop, then to carry stuff to and from work. Conservatively I would estimate my tote bags have been used well over 1000 times, maybe even more than 2000 and they’re still going.
“Re-usable Plastic Bags” are also known as “Bags for life” – whilst my collection is slowly growing, I’ve had these for for several years and they are excellent and really useful for more than just shopping. Anytime I go anywhere with the kids, or travel, or move stuff around the house etc. They are very very well “re-used”
When I was a kid back in the 1960s my mom went grocery shopping with my grandmother and my aunt Ellen. They shopped at a small A&G grocery store and there was a butcher shop next door. The owner of the store would pack the groceries into cardboard cartons as he rang them up. We would bring the empty boxes back the next week. Only one car made the trip for a weeks worth of groceries and meat for three households.
In 2011, I took a Tesco plastic bag (the then-free throw-away one – exactly the vilified type) and packed some clean clothes in it. I put it all into a backpack and stored it for ~7 years unopened, in a dry storage space at room temperature. When I opened the backpack 7 years later, there was no Tesco bag inside – just some particles of a fine white dust in between the clothes.
Without the dreaded virtue signaling – I have had my multi-use bags for 2 years and am still using them. Many of us are aware that some of the multi-use bags also have an impact on the environment, but made a choice to LESSEN the number of single use plastic bags (even after using them a few more times) entering the environment. The impact of single use plastic bags is horrific in rivers, oceans, and beaches etc. Manufactures keep producing products that impact the environment but do very little to solve the problem. And here’s some irony, there is often a ton of rubbish accumulated around a public rubbish bins because they overflow, but I don’t see many people picking it.
People always seem to forget that we should strive to reduce and reuse before we recycle. Recycle is last resort. I reuse plastic bags for trash bags (I use reusable as often as possible in my area), yogurt containers for tupperware. I sometimes even make reusable bags from leftover plastics. It’s by no means perfect but but it’s how I’m starting.
The first thing that jumped out to me when the article claimed a cotton bag needs to be reused ~7,000 times was how they define a ‘use’. I have tried this a few times and on average I can fit three single use plastic bags worth of groceries in a single cotton tote. Immediately the number drops to 2,333. Then, using the numbers from the article, shopping 3x a week, it takes 15 years to beat the opportunity cost (problematic as well) and I know for a fact my bag is 19 years old because the date is printed on the side, 2002. This bag is great and I intend to use it for decades. Don’t make it sound like SeVEn tHoUSanD UsES is not obtainable in the first place. American consumerism would be a better enemy of the earth than the cotton bag.
Very informative article. If only this sort of in-depth thought was seen by more consumers. Too often “green alternative” is just fancy marketing for products that are of a similar impact to traditional methods, and in some cases worse. What you’re really buying is that nice feeling you get for being “eco-friendly”.
If we take into account the costs and impact of cotton production… Why do we leave out the ENORMOUS energy costs and HUGE environmental impact of OIL extraction, transportation, refining, transportation (again) and storage??? Just one oil pump in the US consumes 9960kWh per month. One offshore platform burns 20-30 tons of diesel each DAY! Pump stations on the pipelines consume electricity. Tankers burn crude oil as fuel and are responsible for most of the emission at sea. Refineries are one of the heaviest polluters in the world, on top of consuming huge amounts of electricity. Land transportation again is responsible for 30% of world’s pollution. Aaaaand if we consider all the wars over oil… all the subsidies the oil industry receives (trillions of $)… all the oil spills and gas leaks… The picture becomes extremely ugly!
In many households, the disposable bags act as a free reusable resource. My family has used them for trash, storage, packing material, lunch bags, and more. When the free resource is taken away, people just buy other kinds of plastics to fill some of those roles. The main difference is that the consumers end up paying more money on everything from bag fees to tiny trash bags.
I have used several thicker plastic reusable bags for over 15 years – these are made from RECYCLED plastic, reducing PET plastic waste. And they are strong and big enough to use for more than just grocery shopping. Estimated saving of at least 750 single use bags, which I would rather not see floating in the ocean or pollute fields. And every bit of plastic we DON’T produce, helps to limit the need for Big Oil to expand, build more pipelines or damage more natural habitats
“Single-use” plastic bags were never used just one time. Everyone used to store them and most people used them for their trash. Now, instead, people need to buy thick plastic bags for residues. So not having the thin plastic bags not only forces us to go to worse alternatives like cotton, but it also forces us to get and produce worse and thicker plastic bags. Well done, bureaucrats. 👏🏻👏🏻
What about jute, the low-cost crop? It is mostly rain-fed, unlike cotton, so the water footprint is low. No pesticides nor genetically modified. Jute is traditionally farmed, in similar conditions to organic produce. Can be grown on wasteland, used in crop rotation to rehabilitate wasteland for crops like rice. Small cultivation period of 4 – 6 months. Completely biodegradable and compostable. One hectare of jute plants can consume about 15 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere and release about 11 tons of oxygen in the 100 days of the jute-growing season. It is infinitely durable than cotton. We can reuse it throughout our life. It can be upcycled for other purposes. Bonus we can save a dying industry. It is my best option after a thorough analysis, although reusable plastic bags came in second. Any critiques?
I made a grocery bag from old denim jeans. It took me roughly one pair of jeans, had pockets, was felled- seamed, and was able to carry more weight than a one-time disposable plastic bag. I did this in 1985. I used this bag, and others like it, for several years. I no longer have young children who are growing me out of house-and-home so I don’t have these bags. After about 15 years of patching and constant laundering and use: they were cut into small pieced and placed into a compost pile. I still use the same insulated bag I purchased 15 years ago for shopping and I don’t see an end in sight. I still use old pillowcases to place my produce in. It is not the bag or what it is made of, it is the mentality of the person who threw a beer bottle out of their car which would cause me to have to deal with a flat on my bicycle. There is a saying: Use it up – Wear it out – Make it do or do without. We do not teach children that resources can be and should be resourced until there is barely anything at all left. Instead, we teach them that newer is always better. Capitalism is crippling the world because it has no ethics.
My oldest cotton bags are over 30 years old. I recently needed to repair the handles, but otherwise they’re still going strong. They’re more hygienic than plastic because they’re washable. I also have single-use plastic bags that I’ve been reusing for up to 10 years, the advantage being that I can always have two or three with me, so virtually never need a store bag.
Anything claiming to be a “life cycle” study that doesn’t factor disposal into its conclusions is bunk. You also can’t compare one reusable bag to one single use bag because each use replaces 3-4 single use bags, which break much more easily, and so carry less and are often doubled. I don’t know which material is best for the environment – I suspect you can cherry pick your criteria to provide your desired conclusion – but I can be certain that reusable bags are the way to go.
I’m using 20L backpack when going to groceries store and have a cotton bag in the pocket if purchase too many goods. Backpack and cotton bag are 10+ y.o. Previous backpack (the same model) I’ve donated after 7 years of using. Previous bag (not cotton, from some synthetic fabric) was completly broken after one year (I think very low quality of the material). Compostable thin film plastic can and must be properly composted with food scrap and another organic waste, but when it ends its life in a landfill, it will just sit there for years.
Here in Germany we got these huge and sturdy shopping bags made of recycled PET bottles, costing around 0.80€ each. We got a bunch of them of few years back and they are lasting forever. Plus they are much more versatile compared to the old, flimsy plastic bags, since they are so much bigger and don’t break so easily when you put something heavy in it. I assume those are covered under the “thick reusable plastic bag” category in the article. They are the clear winner, since paper bags are a joke.
We have definitely used our heavy weight reusable plastic bags way more 54 times. We use them once a week at least and we’ve had them for several years already. And yes, they need to be washed occasionally, so there’s extra water and soap involved, but still, using them for years mitigates the washing of them I would imagine. 🙂 As for using cotton bags 7100 times, well, we were just discussing that my spouse has been using a cotton bag for their lunch every day for at least a decade, so we’re only about a third of the way there, and quite honestly, it’s starting to shows signs of its useful life coming to an end, so we’re not going to make it to 7100. Thankfully we don’t use more than just that one cotton bag. We will, however, cut that bag apart and use the fabric for something else, but I doubt it will be around long enough to reach that 7100 use mark, even with its new usage.
What I like about reusable bags, both cotton and plastic, is I can use them for groceries and a ton of other stuff. I also have cotton bags that I got 20+ years ago and still use. But this isn’t an environmental argument, just a utility one. I don’t get reusable bags to be green, but because they are versatile and last a long time.
I like using the heavy Lands End canvas totes. Can fit a lot of groceries in a single bag without really worrying about weight. Not sure I want to think about the footprint of those bags, but we do use them for more than just groceries. They’re great for travel, too, or really any time you need to pack up a bunch of stuff. … Just realizing I’m sounding like an ad. I just really like them and kind of wish something more like them had been included in the article, too. But, I figure, they’re probably like the cotton bag x10 or something. x.x
In my country single use plastic bags used to be the most common sort of bag used as a trash bag, and after a large tax was imposed on them, most people stopped buying them, and the reduction of single-use plastic bags has caused problems for power plants that burn trash to make electricity, the reduction in plastic has meant that the generators aren’t getting as much incidental lubrication as they used to, so they’ve had to resort to adding oil to the burn cycle to keep the generators from seizing up.
I wanted to look up, as it was specifically cotton cloth bags compared, how the production of linen compares to cotton. It turns out that if we want greener cloth bags we should use linen as the take less water to turn into actual cloth while also lasting longer meaning the can be used more with less of production pollution. I am surprised, while also completing expecting an industry like cotton would try to hold on for as long as possible, that we haven’t switch over to using a better material already
I have an insulated Trader Joe bag that I use to haul my reusable water bottles, and it’s held up for at least five years of 3x a week use so far. A larger cotton tote might replace 3-4 bags in each trip. I see people trying to get home carrying a half dozen plastic bags when what they should have is a large bag slung over their shoulder.
I use my canvas totes for EVERYTHING, not just groceries, and I repurpose single use plastic bags for trash and kitty litter I actually mostly use second hand reusable plastic bags (mom keeps sending them) for groceries and only sometimes my canvas totes, because those are often being used for something else lol
Here’s an extremely relevant footnote from the Danish report about the cotton bag reuse numbers: “Conversely, for composite and cotton the very high number of reuse times is given by the ozone depletion impact alone. Without considering ozone depletion, the number of reuse times ranges from 50 to1400 for conventional cotton, from 150 to 3800 for organic cotton, and from 0 to 740 for the composite material bag. The highest number is due to the use of water resource, but also to freshwater and terrestrial eutrophication.” Another source pinpoints this high value for ozone depletion to the assumption that natural gas is used to power cotton irrigation…
One thing I was surprised the article didn’t address – Hygiene. I’ve been using tote bags forever, but I still take a few disposable bags for the cat litter. But after covid hit, a lot of stores stopped dealing with re-usable bags for hygienic reasons. That really got me thinking… How many people wash their reusable bags after every shopping trip? How many people EVER wash their reusable bags?
The greenest option is the stuff you already own, so I will keep using my cloth bags. The sturdy cotton ones I’ve had for years – my oldest ones are from the mid-late 90s – and I repair them when needed. A couple of them have their big black oily stains from banging against my bicycle wheel as they rode on my handlebars. The reuseable plastic type ones don’t last nearly as long but I repair those too. I do have frikkin’ tons of them because even though I haven’t BOUGHT any in eons you get them as freebies so often. But as far as people not having their own bags or not bothering or forgetting them or whatever, I like the solution that Vitamin Cottage/Natural Grocers uses: they don’t offer any bags at all. If you don’t bring your bags, there are bins up front by the registers full of the boxes that their shipments come in that you can take. Reuse, THEN recycle!
Something that I’ve always found to be interesting is that I go to the grocery store to buy plastic trash bags and plastic dog poop bags and I put them into my fancy reusable canvas bag 🙃 I’ve started composting lately so that I can reduce how much I need to throw out, and I’m working on an alternative to the dog poop situation. Maybe we could eliminate plastic bags altogether and separate our garbage so that we can just toss everything into the garbage truck when they come by, and all of the compost able stuff can go into a backyard or balcony compost, or even to a community compost! In Spain they have big dumpsters and recycling containers every few blocks and the neighbors bring their trash there whenever they want to, so maybe a bag isn’t necessary at all