Re:The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered wit...
by inglor_cz on Sunday August 01, 2021 @05:12AM
(#28024974)
7100 times is quite a lot. If used once a day, that would mean approx. 20 years of use.
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.
Re:The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered wit...
by XMPPwocky on Saturday July 31, 2021 @09:26PM
(#28022956)
> A simple approximation for environmental damage is the cost in $.
Neglecting externalities seems like the exact opposite of what you'd want to do in a discussion about environmental impact.
Re:The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered wit...
by roenxi on Sunday August 01, 2021 @12:35AM
(#28023820)
Yeah. But there is no fundamental reason to assume that the externalities of a cheap option are different from an expensive one.
And price is generally an extremely good indicator of how much energy it took to produce something.
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!