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The study found that, to have a lower environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have to be used forty-three times and a cotton tote would have

The study found that, to have a lower environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have to be used forty-three times and a cotton tote would have to be used an astonishing seventy-one hundred times. “How many of those bags will last that long?” Franklin-Wallis asks. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck also note that exchanging plastic for other materials may involve “tradeoffs,” including “energy and water use and carbon emissions.” Why am I not surprised.

Brotkrumen 3y ago
We can electrify the processes, make the power grid mostly green and require industrial processes to recycle most of its water. In fact the tech exists and the legislation exists and works.
reaperman 3y ago
It's very responsible of the New Yorker to bring this up. For individual studies it definitely depends on how "environmental impact" is defined. For example, looking at only GHG emissions, you'd have to use a ceramic mug 500 times (without breaking it!) before the GHG emissions of creating the mug was less than the GHG emissions of creating 500 styrofoam cups. That's because a styrofoam cup is 99% air and merely contains 4.4 grams of plastic (about 4mL of volume before it's foamed up and pumped full of gas). Whereas a ceramic mug weighs 200-400 grams. Just kilning the 400g of the mug to dry the clay uses a lot of energy / creates a lot of GHG emissions, compared to processing 4 grams of plastic. However, GHG emission is just one part of styrofoams environmental impact. The ceramic mug can be crushed up and essentially become part of clay again. The styrofoam just ... never decomposes. The styrofoam contains (and literally is itself) an endocrine disruptor -- so even as it does "decompose" it pollutes the environment with itself and other chemical additives in the polymer. The styrofoam is likely to contaminate your food as well, especially when restaurants put hot food in it and it melts small holes in the styrofoam box, or when kids chew on the styrofoam cups. But then, ceramic mugs may have various harmful metals in them or toxic chemicals/metals in its paint and glaze. Basically, it's very, very important for us to start doing full hazard and lifecycle analyses of the materials we use at large scales. Overall, I think we're currently greatly underestimating the hazards of most of the newer modern materials. I also think the energy requirements to switch back to traditional materials would be untenable -- and still require ubiquitous quality control to minimize harmful heavy metals / etc in the raw materials. But I think anyone who says "well it's just too hard then, forge ahead!" is terribly misguided or callous. And most people who say "we need to go back to metal/paper/wood/glass for everything!" needs to be fully prepared to describe to listeners/readers how that would affect daily habits -- you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups. I don't think everyone who pontificates on this is a hypocrite -- many of them do advocate for reducing consumption above all else. It's just a very hard sell. But we don't have any roadmap at all for taking these contaminants out of the environment once they disperse throughout it.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  > you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups Of the many things we need to change, this is NOT a hard sell, I have been doing it for several years now, and for the past few years I have even gotten a discount... there's a caveat though : it's a plastic cup (unlike their paper cups with what I assume is an extremely thin plastic layer), and I now realize that I haven't really done the kind of math they did there, neither did I double-check my university where I got it about just how harmful this cup was supposed to be. Still, some countries (like Germany ?) successfully resisted the phasing out of the (unbroken) glass bottle deposit system, that plastic bottle sellers are trying to get rid of.
- maeil 3y ago
  > you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups. Tens of thousands of people already do this, if not more.
com2kid 3y ago
I inherited my fabric shopping bags from my grandmother, she made some of them 30 years ago. They are also many times thicker than the cotton bags you can buy in stores, so they might very well need another couple generations before they are carbon neutral!
- reaperman 3y ago
  Yeah much of the problem is that people aren't currently willing to change their lifestyle to embrace the "reduce" and "reuse" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" triad. They only know two options: "Paper or plastic?" because the vast majority of people don't want to bring their own bags from home to the store. Or their own cup to Starbucks. Or their own to-go food box to the pizza place. I'm trying to imagine how DoorDash would even work without single-use plastics? Maybe we'd have standardized reusable containers with deposits on them that could be returned to a central location for $1-2 refunds per container, where they'd get sanitized and re-distributed via restaurant supply companies.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Australia banned single use plastics ages ago, some states decades ago. At the start you get the complainers telling you that they will just buy new bags every time, but theses days almost everyone brings their bags with them. People just have to be dragged kicking and screaming but they eventually do move.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      Oh wow. Okay. This[0] is...exactly the model I gave actually. $6 deposit apparently. Amazing - I'm actually blown away that this is already implemented across a large country. 0: https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/design-style/returnr-australia https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/design-style/returnr-a... Edited to remove a second link that I failed to double-check before posting.
      - defrost 3y ago
morsch 3y ago
Here's the study: https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-... The relevant section is 6.3. The cited number is relative to a LDPE carrier bag (page 25 has pictures of what that is). When considering only climate impact, cotton bags are better after 52 times reusing them. Note that those numbers, as I understand it, assume that the reference LDPE bag is reused as a garbage bag (EOL3), which is optimal but probably not what usually happens? But EOL3 only differs by a factor of about two (page 59) from the other two EOL options, incineration and recycling; I think landfill is not an EOL they looked at because it's not done in Denmark, nor did they consider the impact if the plastic bag is not properly disposed of, ie. it ends up in the environment.
stef25 3y ago
The best solution is then probably re-using your plastic bag. Where I am you don't give free plastic bags anymore. Instead they'll sell heavy duty ones that can carry something like 20lbs and I've never seen break. And of course they have the shop's logo all over it. Most people here now use these all the time.
trgn 3y ago
A plastic bag is literal trash. The problem with these sort of equivocations is that they conveniently side-step the categorical argument. One something like; do not surround yourself with trash. realshadow has rule 7, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503179, "quality over quantity". That is a value argument, not an efficiency argument. Only arguing from efficiency is essentially internalizing the logic of the machine. If everything is evaluated whether it minimized/maximizes one metric or another, quality of life will, inevitably, decline. In this case, surrounded by plastic trash, ingesting, drinking plastic trash. Plastic bags must die. Why? Because they are trash. That's the value system I would love to see in this world.
- gerbilly 3y ago
  > Only arguing from efficiency is essentially internalizing the logic of the machine. Exactly this, I wish I could upvote you a thousand times.
- kmmlng 3y ago
  You raise an interesting point, but isn't this just moving to another extreme? It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, we are probably putting too much emphasis on efficiency at the moment, but completely focusing on quality and disregarding efficiency isn't the solution either. It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no? If we stick with the plastic vs cotton bag example, we are considering two factors: some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n. If n=1, would you still favor the cotton bag just because it is higher quality? Isn't it also mostly trash in this case? What is trash? I'd argue it's a product that we cannot or do not squeeze any additional utility out of. How about n=10? n=20?
  - trgn 3y ago
    > isn't this just moving to another extreme? > It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, Actually, I would agree with that for sure. The real world is grey, and multiple things are true at once. I'm certainly guilty of leaning to the other extreme here. > some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n I believe I understand, and I appreciate the overall push back. But starkly put, and to be a little flippant .. > would you still favor the cotton bag just because it is higher quality? .. absolutely yes. Certainly in this case. The reuse number is incredibly (incredibly) flexible. In no world n=1 will be a given. The only reason we have reuse of one for a bag, is out of habit, simply put. Habits change all the time. A cotton bag will not have a reuse of one. It is more expensive to begin with. It could hold sentimental value. It may have a lot of other uses. Do we even need a bag? 80% of time, the store clerk gives you a bag out of muscle memory, not because you can't hold a couple of items in your hands or stuff in your pockets. The utility of a plastic bag might even be closer to 0 than 1. > It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no? I think that is where we might disagree the most. Quality cannot be measured, it can only be known. I hate that this reads as touchy-feely, but I don't know a better way to put it. Once you accept that quality cannot be measured in numbers, it is liberating. Then it allows you to argue in a different paradigm; How your neighborhood "feels" because there's no plastic bags stuck in roadside shrubbery, the peace of mind knowing that your drinking water doesn't have microplastics in it, ... that's genuinely immeasurable. Yet it is the stuff that makes up quality of life. People can be convinced of those qualities, and their value, _without_ quantifying them.

Brotkrumen 3y ago

We can electrify the processes, make the power grid mostly green and require industrial processes to recycle most of its water. In fact the tech exists and the legislation exists and works.

reaperman 3y ago

It's very responsible of the New Yorker to bring this up. For individual studies it definitely depends on how "environmental impact" is defined. For example, looking at only GHG emissions, you'd have to use a ceramic mug 500 times (without breaking it!) before the GHG emissions of creating the mug was less than the GHG emissions of creating 500 styrofoam cups. That's because a styrofoam cup is 99% air and merely contains 4.4 grams of plastic (about 4mL of volume before it's foamed up and pumped full of gas). Whereas a ceramic mug weighs 200-400 grams. Just kilning the 400g of the mug to dry the clay uses a lot of energy / creates a lot of GHG emissions, compared to processing 4 grams of plastic. However, GHG emission is just one part of styrofoams environmental impact. The ceramic mug can be crushed up and essentially become part of clay again. The styrofoam just ... never decomposes. The styrofoam contains (and literally is itself) an endocrine disruptor -- so even as it does "decompose" it pollutes the environment with itself and other chemical additives in the polymer. The styrofoam is likely to contaminate your food as well, especially when restaurants put hot food in it and it melts small holes in the styrofoam box, or when kids chew on the styrofoam cups. But then, ceramic mugs may have various harmful metals in them or toxic chemicals/metals in its paint and glaze. Basically, it's very, very important for us to start doing full hazard and lifecycle analyses of the materials we use at large scales. Overall, I think we're currently greatly underestimating the hazards of most of the newer modern materials. I also think the energy requirements to switch back to traditional materials would be untenable -- and still require ubiquitous quality control to minimize harmful heavy metals / etc in the raw materials. But I think anyone who says "well it's just too hard then, forge ahead!" is terribly misguided or callous. And most people who say "we need to go back to metal/paper/wood/glass for everything!" needs to be fully prepared to describe to listeners/readers how that would affect daily habits -- you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups. I don't think everyone who pontificates on this is a hypocrite -- many of them do advocate for reducing consumption above all else. It's just a very hard sell. But we don't have any roadmap at all for taking these contaminants out of the environment once they disperse throughout it.

BlueTemplar 3y ago
> you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups Of the many things we need to change, this is NOT a hard sell, I have been doing it for several years now, and for the past few years I have even gotten a discount... there's a caveat though : it's a plastic cup (unlike their paper cups with what I assume is an extremely thin plastic layer), and I now realize that I haven't really done the kind of math they did there, neither did I double-check my university where I got it about just how harmful this cup was supposed to be. Still, some countries (like Germany ?) successfully resisted the phasing out of the (unbroken) glass bottle deposit system, that plastic bottle sellers are trying to get rid of.
maeil 3y ago
> you'd have to bring your own $5 drinking vessel to Starbucks because there probably wouldn't be a "to-go" cup available without petrochemical-based cups. Tens of thousands of people already do this, if not more.

com2kid 3y ago

I inherited my fabric shopping bags from my grandmother, she made some of them 30 years ago. They are also many times thicker than the cotton bags you can buy in stores, so they might very well need another couple generations before they are carbon neutral!

reaperman 3y ago
Yeah much of the problem is that people aren't currently willing to change their lifestyle to embrace the "reduce" and "reuse" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" triad. They only know two options: "Paper or plastic?" because the vast majority of people don't want to bring their own bags from home to the store. Or their own cup to Starbucks. Or their own to-go food box to the pizza place. I'm trying to imagine how DoorDash would even work without single-use plastics? Maybe we'd have standardized reusable containers with deposits on them that could be returned to a central location for $1-2 refunds per container, where they'd get sanitized and re-distributed via restaurant supply companies.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Australia banned single use plastics ages ago, some states decades ago. At the start you get the complainers telling you that they will just buy new bags every time, but theses days almost everyone brings their bags with them. People just have to be dragged kicking and screaming but they eventually do move.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Oh wow. Okay. This[0] is...exactly the model I gave actually. $6 deposit apparently. Amazing - I'm actually blown away that this is already implemented across a large country. 0: https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/design-style/returnr-australia https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/design-style/returnr-a... Edited to remove a second link that I failed to double-check before posting.
    - defrost 3y ago

morsch 3y ago

Here's the study: https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-... The relevant section is 6.3. The cited number is relative to a LDPE carrier bag (page 25 has pictures of what that is). When considering only climate impact, cotton bags are better after 52 times reusing them. Note that those numbers, as I understand it, assume that the reference LDPE bag is reused as a garbage bag (EOL3), which is optimal but probably not what usually happens? But EOL3 only differs by a factor of about two (page 59) from the other two EOL options, incineration and recycling; I think landfill is not an EOL they looked at because it's not done in Denmark, nor did they consider the impact if the plastic bag is not properly disposed of, ie. it ends up in the environment.

stef25 3y ago

The best solution is then probably re-using your plastic bag. Where I am you don't give free plastic bags anymore. Instead they'll sell heavy duty ones that can carry something like 20lbs and I've never seen break. And of course they have the shop's logo all over it. Most people here now use these all the time.

trgn 3y ago

A plastic bag is literal trash. The problem with these sort of equivocations is that they conveniently side-step the categorical argument. One something like; do not surround yourself with trash. realshadow has rule 7, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503179, "quality over quantity". That is a value argument, not an efficiency argument. Only arguing from efficiency is essentially internalizing the logic of the machine. If everything is evaluated whether it minimized/maximizes one metric or another, quality of life will, inevitably, decline. In this case, surrounded by plastic trash, ingesting, drinking plastic trash. Plastic bags must die. Why? Because they are trash. That's the value system I would love to see in this world.

gerbilly 3y ago
> Only arguing from efficiency is essentially internalizing the logic of the machine. Exactly this, I wish I could upvote you a thousand times.
kmmlng 3y ago
You raise an interesting point, but isn't this just moving to another extreme? It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, we are probably putting too much emphasis on efficiency at the moment, but completely focusing on quality and disregarding efficiency isn't the solution either. It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no? If we stick with the plastic vs cotton bag example, we are considering two factors: some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n. If n=1, would you still favor the cotton bag just because it is higher quality? Isn't it also mostly trash in this case? What is trash? I'd argue it's a product that we cannot or do not squeeze any additional utility out of. How about n=10? n=20?
- trgn 3y ago
  > isn't this just moving to another extreme? > It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, Actually, I would agree with that for sure. The real world is grey, and multiple things are true at once. I'm certainly guilty of leaning to the other extreme here. > some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n I believe I understand, and I appreciate the overall push back. But starkly put, and to be a little flippant .. > would you still favor the cotton bag just because it is higher quality? .. absolutely yes. Certainly in this case. The reuse number is incredibly (incredibly) flexible. In no world n=1 will be a given. The only reason we have reuse of one for a bag, is out of habit, simply put. Habits change all the time. A cotton bag will not have a reuse of one. It is more expensive to begin with. It could hold sentimental value. It may have a lot of other uses. Do we even need a bag? 80% of time, the store clerk gives you a bag out of muscle memory, not because you can't hold a couple of items in your hands or stuff in your pockets. The utility of a plastic bag might even be closer to 0 than 1. > It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no? I think that is where we might disagree the most. Quality cannot be measured, it can only be known. I hate that this reads as touchy-feely, but I don't know a better way to put it. Once you accept that quality cannot be measured in numbers, it is liberating. Then it allows you to argue in a different paradigm; How your neighborhood "feels" because there's no plastic bags stuck in roadside shrubbery, the peace of mind knowing that your drinking water doesn't have microplastics in it, ... that's genuinely immeasurable. Yet it is the stuff that makes up quality of life. People can be convinced of those qualities, and their value, _without_ quantifying them.