08-20-2009, 03:01 PM
Below is a exert from a website I used in a report from college.
Each year, 14 million trees are cut down to make just 10 million paper bags.
According to the American Forest & Paper Association, 2007 marked an all-time high of 56% for the recycling of paper consumed in the U.S. Curbside paper collection is easy and readily available in most parts of the country. While I applaud the consumer and the industry for reaching this goal and beyond (the industries goal is 60% by 2012) I’d like to point out that the manufacturing of paper products, like plastic, consumes natural resources and creates pollution. As a matter of fact, the production of a paper bag consumes 1 gallon of water (yep, per bag) equating to 50 times that of plastic bags. Yikes!
How does a paper bag get from forest to grocery store? Trees are found, marked and felled. Machinery is then used to remove the logs from the forest floor – whether by logging or, in more remote areas, helicopters.
Machinery requires fossil fuels and roads (which destroy habitat) thereby creating stress on the forests’ inhabitants (even logging a small area has a large impact on the entire ecological chain in surrounding areas).
Trees must dry at least three years before they can be used to make paper. Once aged, machinery is used to strip the bark, which is then chipped into 1 inch squares and cooked under tremendous heat and pressure. This wood stew is then ‘digested’ with a limestone and sulfurous acid for eight hours. The steam and moisture is vented to the outside atmosphere, and the original wood becomes pulp. It takes approximately three tons of wood chips to make one ton of pulp.
The pulp is then washed and bleached, both stages requiring thousands of gallons of clean water. Coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water to make paper. The pulp/water mixture is dumped onto a web of bronze wires, the water showers through, leaving the pulp to dry. This final product is then rolled into paper.
Whew! What a lot of resources to just make the paper. We must include all of the chemicals, electricity, and fossil fuels used in the shipment of this raw material and in the production and shipment of a finished paper bag.
Conclusion....No matter which one you use a enviromentalist is going to flog you and degrage you.
Imagine this if you will. Your standing in a wide open feild and two people are walking towards you very angry looking.Each take a place at one of your sides.
"Dont use plastic bags they kill animals and dont biodegrade! Use paper or reusable bags!"
Next guy
"Dont listen to him by using paper bags your killing habitats and many animals your doing more damage than good use plastic or reuseable bags!!"
Suprise visitor
"Dont listen to them, use paper or plastic bags because reuseable bags manufactured in China, shipped thousands of miles overseas, made with plastic and could take years to decompose. It's also the hot "green" giveaway of the moment: the reusable shopping bag.
The bags usually are printed with environmental slogans as well as corporate logos and pitched as earth-friendly substitutes for the billions of disposable plastic bags that wind up in landfills every year. Home Depot distributed 500,000 free reusable shopping bags last April on Earth Day, and Wal-Mart gave away one million. One line of bags features tags that read, "Saving the World One Bag at a Time."
But well-meaning companies and consumers are finding that shopping bags, like biofuels, are another area where it's complicated to go green. "If you don't reuse them, you're actually worse off by taking one of them," says Bob Lilienfeld, author of the Use Less Stuff Report, an online newsletter about waste prevention. And because many of the bags are made from heavier material, they're also likely to sit longer in landfills than their thinner, disposable cousins, according to Ned Thomas, who heads the department of material science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
No matter what you do , someone is going to hate you and try and make a "valid point" against whatever you choose. Heres the thing I decided to do.
I dont use paper bags. I dont use Plastic bags. I dont use reuseable bags?
Well then Mr. Justin what do you use to get your groceries?
I take my filled cart to the register and instead of placing my items in bags they place them back in my cart. OH MY!! I then roll my cart outside and unload all my grocerys into empty milk crates. I drive home and carry the crates in one at a time empty them out into the spots there supposed to go and then I return my crates back to my vehicle for a later use.
This dosent work for everyone. And see Im using plastic. But Im using the same plastic that is used to make bags but the crates will last me many many years more than a bag or reuseable tote. I have had these crates for about four years now.
Now that my rant is complete. Feel free to bash and rip me apart as I am expecting so many to do. Have a nice day.
Each year, 14 million trees are cut down to make just 10 million paper bags.
According to the American Forest & Paper Association, 2007 marked an all-time high of 56% for the recycling of paper consumed in the U.S. Curbside paper collection is easy and readily available in most parts of the country. While I applaud the consumer and the industry for reaching this goal and beyond (the industries goal is 60% by 2012) I’d like to point out that the manufacturing of paper products, like plastic, consumes natural resources and creates pollution. As a matter of fact, the production of a paper bag consumes 1 gallon of water (yep, per bag) equating to 50 times that of plastic bags. Yikes!
How does a paper bag get from forest to grocery store? Trees are found, marked and felled. Machinery is then used to remove the logs from the forest floor – whether by logging or, in more remote areas, helicopters.
Machinery requires fossil fuels and roads (which destroy habitat) thereby creating stress on the forests’ inhabitants (even logging a small area has a large impact on the entire ecological chain in surrounding areas).
Trees must dry at least three years before they can be used to make paper. Once aged, machinery is used to strip the bark, which is then chipped into 1 inch squares and cooked under tremendous heat and pressure. This wood stew is then ‘digested’ with a limestone and sulfurous acid for eight hours. The steam and moisture is vented to the outside atmosphere, and the original wood becomes pulp. It takes approximately three tons of wood chips to make one ton of pulp.
The pulp is then washed and bleached, both stages requiring thousands of gallons of clean water. Coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water to make paper. The pulp/water mixture is dumped onto a web of bronze wires, the water showers through, leaving the pulp to dry. This final product is then rolled into paper.
Whew! What a lot of resources to just make the paper. We must include all of the chemicals, electricity, and fossil fuels used in the shipment of this raw material and in the production and shipment of a finished paper bag.
Conclusion....No matter which one you use a enviromentalist is going to flog you and degrage you.
Imagine this if you will. Your standing in a wide open feild and two people are walking towards you very angry looking.Each take a place at one of your sides.
"Dont use plastic bags they kill animals and dont biodegrade! Use paper or reusable bags!"
Next guy
"Dont listen to him by using paper bags your killing habitats and many animals your doing more damage than good use plastic or reuseable bags!!"
Suprise visitor
"Dont listen to them, use paper or plastic bags because reuseable bags manufactured in China, shipped thousands of miles overseas, made with plastic and could take years to decompose. It's also the hot "green" giveaway of the moment: the reusable shopping bag.
The bags usually are printed with environmental slogans as well as corporate logos and pitched as earth-friendly substitutes for the billions of disposable plastic bags that wind up in landfills every year. Home Depot distributed 500,000 free reusable shopping bags last April on Earth Day, and Wal-Mart gave away one million. One line of bags features tags that read, "Saving the World One Bag at a Time."
But well-meaning companies and consumers are finding that shopping bags, like biofuels, are another area where it's complicated to go green. "If you don't reuse them, you're actually worse off by taking one of them," says Bob Lilienfeld, author of the Use Less Stuff Report, an online newsletter about waste prevention. And because many of the bags are made from heavier material, they're also likely to sit longer in landfills than their thinner, disposable cousins, according to Ned Thomas, who heads the department of material science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
No matter what you do , someone is going to hate you and try and make a "valid point" against whatever you choose. Heres the thing I decided to do.
I dont use paper bags. I dont use Plastic bags. I dont use reuseable bags?
Well then Mr. Justin what do you use to get your groceries?
I take my filled cart to the register and instead of placing my items in bags they place them back in my cart. OH MY!! I then roll my cart outside and unload all my grocerys into empty milk crates. I drive home and carry the crates in one at a time empty them out into the spots there supposed to go and then I return my crates back to my vehicle for a later use.
This dosent work for everyone. And see Im using plastic. But Im using the same plastic that is used to make bags but the crates will last me many many years more than a bag or reuseable tote. I have had these crates for about four years now.
Now that my rant is complete. Feel free to bash and rip me apart as I am expecting so many to do. Have a nice day.