Plastic Isn’t The Worst Thing For The Environment
The way you use it is.
In recent years, we’ve seen a shift in companies moving away from plastic packaging to other more environmentally-friendly options such as paper, glass, or even metal packaging. Are these changes really beneficial to the environment? Or have we fallen victim to greenwashing?
Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company’s products are more environmentally sound.
Plastic Isn’t As Bad As It Seems
To start off, let’s think about what the shift from paper to other materials means for the environment. To do so, we have to consider these materials in terms of their Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). This means considering the total amount of resources, energy, and waste produced when manufacturing them, and how the materials are dealt with after their useful life.
For example, while metals are more easily recycled compared to paper and plastics, the amount of energy and resources to extract, refine and manufacture them far outweighs that of paper and plastics. Hence, their overall carbon footprint according to their LCA is greater than that of materials such as paper and plastic.
Switching from plastic bags to paper bags, as many companies have done, might in fact be more harmful to the environment than we realize.
Plastic bags take longer to decompose, and pose a serious threat to natural ecosystems when improperly discarded. On the other hand, paper bags take more energy and resources to produce. Anyone who has bought something in a paper bag will realize they aren’t as sturdy as plastic bags, especially if you’re buying anything that could end up wetting the bag and tearing it. While paper bags may seem less harmful to the environment upfront, because of their recyclability and biodegradability, they are more costly in terms of resources required to manufacture them.
So if paper bags aren’t the solution, what is?
Choose Reusables, Only if You Actually Reuse Them
Reusable bags are the ideal in between although they take up significantly more resources to produce — think about the water and fertilizers used on cotton farms, the energy required to turn them from fiber into yarn, and then to bags. But utility outweighs the initial cost in the long run. The catch is that they have to be reused at least 300–500 times before they negate the environmental impacts of using single-use plastic. Treating a reusable bag as single-use is worse for the environment than using a plastic bag.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Recyclable and compostable packaging have also become popular, and many eco-business are supporting their use. Unfortunately, the argument is the same for these types of packaging — that they often require more resources to produce than plastic, and the benefits from recycling or composting them are too small to make up for their higher carbon footprint. While most consumers try to minimize their impact by recycling, the process of recycling plastic may provide only a 20–30% efficiency compared to using virgin plastic.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle should be done in order of priority. Reducing our consumption has the greatest impact on the environment. If that option has been exhausted, only then should we look to reuse and finally, recycle.
Summary
- Single-use plastics aren’t inherently bad. In fact, they consume the least amount of resources to produce, as compared to metals and glass.
- Reusable products are only beneficial if they are re-used frequently to compensate for the amount of resources they consume to make.
- Recycling and composting has a relatively small impact to make up for the initial cost of production. Reducing consumption is the most environmentally-friendly choice.
Source:
Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, 54, 22, 14143–14151, Publication Date:October 26, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c05295
