Plastic bags vs. paper bags: a classic case for 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

The law by the State Govt of Delhi to ban the use, sale and storage of all kinds of plastic bags has meant that customers, shopkeepers, hoteliers and hospital staff face a fine and a possible jail sentence for using non-biodegradable bags.

For last several years, Delhi has been quietly filling up with plastic bags as solid waste management initiatives have not taken off. Recent studies have indicated that almost 10 m plastic bags (global estimates range from 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags annually) are used every day creating a challenge on several fronts: (a) challenges in terms of streets being littered with them; (b) a larger problem being that polythene takes hundreds of years to decompose and creates demand for oil, which is used to make plastics

The Delhi ban was first lightly implemented, giving people time to switch to jute, cotton, recycled-paper and compostable bag however starting late July, prosecution machinery initiated punitive action. The first targets in Delhi are the industrial units that manufacture the plastic bags in the capital, which officials say will be closed down. Govt officials feel that punitive measures were needed after a law prohibiting all but the thinnest plastic bags – no thicker than 0.04mm – was ignored.

Although for years, the government had originally concluded that plastic bags were too cheap and convenient to be disposed of, the authorities appear to have been swayed by environmentalists who pointed out that used bags were clogging drains and so providing breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever. There is evidence that prohibition of plastic bags can work. Countries such as Rwanda, Bhutan and Bangladesh have all had bans enforced.

In recent months, several other states have barred the use of plastics - Jammu & Kashmir and West Bengal have previously barred their use and Himachal Pradesh government has recently banned use of plastics from Aug 15.

Surprisingly these actions have been met with contradictory statements from certain departments of the Central Govt., most notable being the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Minister Jairam Ramesh claims the ban would lead to a massive demand for supply of paper bags leading to a further increase in deforestation. He has stressed that the problem was not plastic bags, but the use of recycled plastic and the material made using coloring material. As such, he advocates that the state government should insist on maintaining a certain thickness and the ban should be on recycled plastic bags but not on plastics per se.

Per Ramesh, the entire world uses plastic bags and they came as an alternative to paper bags. He added that paper bags would lead to cutting of trees. While Ramesh has stated that the central govt. policy will encourage bio-degradable plastic, he views it as a futuristic initiative considering that bio-degradable plastic is an expensive proposition and is not yet being used commercially on a large scale.

These Ramesh vs. State Govt. differences brings forth the classic debate on "paper vs. plastic bags". There is some merit in Ramesh’s arguments that paper bags do not necessarily represent a better solution than plastic bags. Both paper and plastic bags are convenient addictions and consume natural resources and cause significant pollution and a majority end-up in landfills. As a case in point, the production of a paper bag consumes 1 gallon of water equating to 50 times that of plastic bags. However a well-packed, single, grocery-size paper bag can hold the same volume of loot as 4 plastic bags.

Let us examine a few other dimensions:
1.    Use of Natural Resources: Most paper comes from tree pulp, so the impact of paper bag production on forests is enormous. Deforestation also leads to a significant increase in GHG emissions. In addition, the manufacturing of bags (paper or plastic) produces greenhouse gases.

2.    Recycling and Degradability: US EPA research shows that approximately 5.2% of plastic bags are recycled. The balance typically end up in the local landfill.

Situation is not significantly different in case of paper bags. Only 10 to 15% of paper bags are recycled.
The SPI website (the plastic industries trade organization) acknowledges that most plastics don’t biodegrade but instead photo-degrade. How long that process takes is not clear. I’ve heard the range debated somewhere between 500-1000 years. Whatever the number, plastic experts agree that it’s a long, long time and we have not had any first hand evidence of its decomposition. Most likely, every single piece of plastic created is still here on this planet. That’s a lot of plastic.

Even in landfills, paper does not degrade or break down at a substantially faster rate than plastic does. A paper bags takes up more space than a plastic bag in a landfill, but because paper is recycled at a higher rate, saving space in landfills is less of an issue.

An argument can be made that plastic decreases landfill mass. Plastics, as a whole, make up 18% of waste by volume and 7% by weight (plastic bags themselves are light and take up very little space). If plastic were to be replaced by other materials, trash weight would increase by 150%, packaging would weigh 300% more and energy consumed by the industry would increase by 100%.

3.    Energy requirement: Per research published by plastic industry associations, it takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag.

4.    Pollution: Paper sacks generate 70% more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags. The majority of kraft paper is made by heating wood chips under pressure at high temperatures in a chemical solution. As evidenced by the unmistakable stench commonly associated with paper mills, the use of these toxic chemicals contributes to both air pollution, such as acid rain, and water pollution. Further toxicity is generated as both plastic and paper bags degrade.

As we can see, its really tough to say as to which offers a better choice. Paper may consume more resources to produce, however, it is also more recyclable than plastic if one includes the fact that paper can be composted and plastic bags cannot.

At the end of the day using reusable shopping bags seems as the only real and viable answer! This basically requires all of us to change our consumerist attitudes and behavior.

In United Kingdom, while there is no ban on plastic bags, some retailers and traders have been more pioneering and producing their own reusable bags. It is time we do the same here in India.