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Turn it around and see if this makes more sense: for the pollution caused by making one cotton bag you could have made 131 plastic bags. This means that if you
by db48x 8y ago
Turn it around and see if this makes more sense: for the pollution caused by making one cotton bag you could have made 131 plastic bags. This means that if you fail to use your cotton bag 131 or more times, you've created more pollution than you have saved.
- imgabe 8y agoWhy wouldn't you use it more times than that? They last years. That's ~2 years of weekly grocery trips. And each usage is going to replace 2-3 of the smaller, weaker plastic bags, maybe more.
- db48x 8y agoOf course most people who purchase cotton bags intend to use them many times. The study that was quoted simply quantified how much reuse is required to make them worth it, and it turns out that this is a surprising number to many people. Plastic bags are really cheap, and growing cotton is more expensive than it would seem.
- _ph_ 8y agoThe problem we are talking about isn't the pollution creating the plastic bags but their disposal in the deep sea.
- codingdave 8y agoOK, lets run with that scenario. I shop once a week, and normally fill 2-3 cotton bags. So I'd have paid off my pollution within a year. Maybe 6 months, as my cotton bags hold twice as much as plastic bags. Also, not all production of bags is going to have the same level of pollution. We DIY many things in our home, and although we do buy the raw cloth, we sew them together ourselves. I suspect that drops the pollution somewhat. In which case, I may be in a better place simply by using bags for a few months. That doesn't sound so bad to me.
- weberc2 8y agoSomehow many of our cotton bags get lost probably well before they've seen 131 uses. :(
- jadell 8y agoWe keep ours in the trunk of our car. Makes it easy to do unplanned grocery shopping. Take them in, unpack, hang them on the doorknob to bring back to the car next time we go out. Haven't lost one yet, and we've had the same 5 for ~8 years.