From looking at all sides of the debate it is clear that there are benefits and disadvantages to using both materials.
For example, you can partner with environmental groups who aim to replant trees to negate the negative environmental impacts. Using recycled, home compostable, biodegradable plastics helps to reduce the excess plastic packaging from damaging the environment.
Ultimately whilst there are many disadvantages to using any materials, we must remember that plastic is not evil. Materials other than cotton, however, perform much better in sustainability metrics. Nonwoven polypropylene PP is another popular option. Made from a more durable kind of plastic, these bags need to be reused around eleven times to break even with the impact of conventional plastic.
In addition to varying widely in their eco-friendliness, there is the chance that reusable bags go unused, because consumers have to remember to bring the bags with them to the store. The biggest positive of reusable bags is that their use cuts down on the amount of litter on land and in the ocean. Studies have found that bans on plastic bags in cities in the United States and Europe have decreased the amount of plastic litter in nearby waters.
Because reusable and paper bags have a huge environmental cost upfront, and plastic bags create greater negative effects after being used, it is hard to determine which type of bag is truly the most sustainable. Regardless of whether the bag is plastic, paper, or another material, the most sustainable choice is the bag you already have.
In every study and for every type of bag, it was clear that reusing the bag as many times as you can reduces its impact on the environment. Overall, making the effort to reuse any bag that comes into your possession, and disposing of the bag responsibly, is key. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.
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Unlike plastic bags which the report says are produced from the waste products of oil refining paper requires forests to be cut down to produce the bags. The manufacturing process, according to the research, also produces a higher concentration of toxic chemicals compared with making single-use plastic bags.
Paper bags also weigh more than plastic; this means transportation requires more energy, adding to their carbon footprint, the study adds. And if new forests are grown to replace lost trees, this will help to offset the climate change impact, because trees lock up carbon from the atmosphere. In , the Environment Agency examined a range of bags made from different materials to find out how many times they need to be reused in order to have a lower global warming potential than a conventional single-use plastic bag.
The study found paper bags needed to be reused at least three times, one fewer than plastic bags for life four times. At the other end of the spectrum, the Environment Agency found that cotton bags required the most number of reuses, at That was down to the high amount of energy used to produce and fertilise cotton yarn. Non biodegradable materials in a landfill are fairly benign given how gradually they degrade, while materials that biodegrade will more readily though still slowly undergo anaerobic digestion that creates methane.
We recognize that these are important points to reconsider as more and more US landfills capture and use these emissions for energy, or as more and more landfills move to WTE plants. Additionally, the majority of people currently have access to plastic recycling, though not all have access to curbside recycling.
On the other hand, rates of recycling are extremely low, though the trend is rising. Paper, on the other hand, is a bit of an end-of-life superhero. Paper can be recycled many times before its fibers become so short that it cannot be remade into any new paper product. It can also be composted, and it should be composted if there is any food or grease on it. If it happens to end up as litter again, not common for ecommerce packaging , it would biodegrade quickly and cause far less harm to ocean life.
Its main downside is that if paper-based packaging ends up in the landfill, 1 it is thicker and therefore takes more room than plastic counterparts and 2 it is likely to biodegrade - slowly but more rapidly than plastic - and generate landfill gas LFG emissions that are such a major concern of landfills.
Bioplastics have a few end of life paths. Something can be:. We see three important challenges related to biodegradable items that are compostable. Typically, unless they are certified for home compost, compostable synthetic material e.
These generally require microorganisms inside a professionally managed compost facility to consume them within a relatively short period of time. Second, compostable bioplastics are screwing up the recycling stream.
PLA 7 is an example of this. Many people send their PLA 7 bio-based, compostable plastic to the recycling facility. PLA 7 is not recyclable. If a MRF sells a bale of plastic with too much PLA contamination in it, it could be rejected on delivery to its buyer, and the entire bale would be landfill bound.
Lindsay Fernandez-Salvador, a program manager at the Organic Materials Review Institute OMRI , which determines whether specific agricultural input products, such as compost, can be certified organic states that if compost has any synthetic materials in it, they disallow it. Additionally, industrial composting facilities are currently not well set up to process massive volumes of bioplastics as they were developed as a solution organic rather than synthetic waste , and would need to be reconfigured to accommodate major increases in bioplastics.
Finally, there is a commonly held misperception that people are doing good by buying biodegradable items and sending those items to the landfill where they will simply disappear after a short amount of time.
However, that degradation actually leads to undesirable LFG emissions. Note that there is an emergence of new materials that actually biodegrade very easily, by soaking the item in hot water for example.
We are intrigued by these new technologies and may explore them going forward if they meet other important aspects of our sustainability framework.
All of this is to say that the world of bioplastics and disposal options for bioplastics is still evolving, and is currently fraught with confusion that can lead to ill consequences and waste stream contamination. We are confident this will improve over time and closely tracking forward progress in the industry! What about the other things that are wrong with plastic? There are other challenges with respect to plastic.
In some uses such as food or IV bags , it is obvious how these toxins leach from the package to our bodies. Additionally, these chemicals are in our mattresses, furniture, cars - you name it. This is a very legitimate downside of plastic, and the toxic effects of bioplastic are unknown at this time.
The short lifespan and minimal touch of ecommerce packaging likely makes this less of an issue, but there is no specific, though there is admittedly no clear and focused research on this question in particular. From sandwich bags to plastic soda bottles to product packaging to disposable cutlery, inexpensive and highly versatile plastic has enabled companies to offer a host of goods that are designed to make our lives more convenient.
Of course, many single use items are not plastic - glass food jars, paper towels, paper bags to name a small few. So what does this all mean for packaging? Unfortunately, it means that EcoEnclose cannot and does not attempt to provide you with a single, universal rule for what material to package your goods with.
EcoEnclose has instead focused on building a product line of packaging that is made with as much recycled content as humanly possible as we see this as the number one way to support eco friendly strategies and business practices. Thus, we have made efforts to carry diverse packaging solutions that span both recycled paper and recycled plastic but does not currently include bioplastics given that recycled bioplastics have not yet emerged.
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