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.
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.
But on the third hand locking up hydrocarbons in plastics while we're dealing with global warming seems like a positive good.
> Microplastic pollution caused by washing processes of synthetic textiles has recently been assessed as the main source of primary microplastics in the oceans.
[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x
[2]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...
[3]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/17/micropla...
Fuzzy blanket (synthetic)? Microplastics.
Cozy sweater (synthetic or blend, but lets face it: usually synthetic)? Microplastics.
Microfiber towel? Microplastics.
Plastic straws, bags, and packaging? Landfill.
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.
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.
The hydraulic conductivity of this clay is measured in millions of years per inch. It's water tight, and it's super absorbent.
Yes, perpetual containment is what they are designed for.
Hydrocarbons can break down on their own, which is why you are supposed to change your cars oil every 3 months regardless of how many miles you drive.
It also degrades in the marine environment.
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.
Asbestos pretty much stays asbestos forever.
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
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.
https://www.azurestandard.com/ has drop off points across the country. They are amazing.
https://dispatchgoods.com/ for Bay Area delivery food in reusable metal containers.
Most health food grocery stores do something similar with their bulk foods and soaps.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/malaysia-bans-waste-import...
I’m not sure how the situation has changed since.
More here: http://environment.gov.au/protection/waste/how-we-manage-was...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.tetrapak.com/en-anz/sustainability/planet/carton...
Of course. I was referring/responding to the parent comment.
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.
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."
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-reuse-bags.html
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!
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.
Neglecting externalities seems like the exact opposite of what you'd want to do in a discussion about environmental impact.
And price is generally an extremely good indicator of how much energy it took to produce something.
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.
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.
Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment.
Your fine isn't tied to any externality so it is stupid.
- cleaning products (with plastic containers
- water (warmed by burning gas)
- spending time which could be used in any other way
- who knows what else
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.
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.
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 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.
And if you put it in context, you’re already “burning” the carbon in the food you eat and plastic just adds a little bit of overhead to that.
And the amount of plastic actually burned is quite small when you compare it to everything else.
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.
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?
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.
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...
The thing is, "recycle" is the only one that preserves the economy, so that's what everyone jumped on.
So? Is there a shortage of centuries? Do you really think—300 years from now—they’ll be using plastic?
A bit of plastic — to a fish gut - is no different than a pebble, chunk of coral, bit of bone, etc.
Littering is bad.
And litter that doesn’t naturally decompose is annoying.
But, it’s an aesthetics problem. Plastic is harmless (despite the occasional picture of a turtle with a straw in its nose...)
Over time, whether is decomposes or not, it will be covered with sediment and gone from the ecosystem.
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.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...
“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.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...
Let me know when the ocean has .5grams of nano-sized plastic particles per Liter.
That would be around 300000000000000 Tons of plastic, all in the form of nano-sized particles.
Then — and only then — would you begin to see an effect on Mussels.
But, of course, long before that, the world would have ended.
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.
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.