I’ve been seeing a number of web sites that seem to make it clear that plastic bags are actually greener than paper bags. But I’m wondering if there is an advantage to plastic that no one has mentioned, carbon sequestration.
Critics say that one of the disadvantages of plastic bags is that they will last “1000 years”. Plastic bags that biodegrade faster however end up releasing carbon dioxide back into the environment contributing to global warming. It seems to me that if they buried plastic bags in places where they won’t degrade they could take carbon permanently out of the environment. 2 birds – 1 stone.
What am I missing?
Cigarettes are good for you.
Sleeper is the movie that established the little known fact.
You are missing an “n.”
I also wondered about paper grocery sacks.
I once visited a paper pulp plant and it hardly seemed green. That was a couple decades ago, however.
Seems like cloth bags are the best but they can kill you!
http://tinyurl.com/2er47e8
(OK, maybe not kill you. But they should probably be washed, which also uses resources.)
>> Publius said, on June 27th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
>> Cigarettes are good for you.
And didn’t that top scientist say radiation leaks are good for you as well?
Ecotards are racist. They hate carbon because it’s black. I prefer to light up bags of charcoal and not even cook anything on it – simply release the carbon. Sometimes I burn plastic bags on it for extra aroma.
I don’t have the bandwidth to research it now but, years ago whebn “paper or plastic” was a common question, my hippie (not hippy – skinny broad) claimed the final energy used to produce a paper bag and the pollution released into the world, were higher than for a plastic bag. I’d be willing to wager (a very small amount) that the amount of petroleum used to harvest and process trees into paper is about the same as what is used to make olastic bags. Dunno fer sure …
# 11 bobbo,”Any of you chemists know what such plastic might be good for?” I’m not a chemist but I played one in pre-med. A couple of decades ago, I helped take care of the Cuban and Haitian refugees being held at Gitmo. They would melt the plastic in an old tin can. After cooling, they had a slug of plastic they would carve into trinkets and some surprisingly sophisticated sculptures. I still have a couple. Admittedly, much of the plastic was heavy duty bags used to contain MRE rations. This might not work with the flimsy sacks they give you at 7-11. And we cared for more than one serious burn from spilling molten plastic on feet or hands! Not nice.
Heading back into the jungle today. Have fun guys. See you in a couple of weeks.
I think plastic bags could be GREAT for the environment if they were tied around the heads of certain people.
#20 Skeptic —- you deballed #14 who was obviously trying to deflate your stated deeds by hoping to point out that you don’t do what 99,999 out of a 100,000 of the rest of everyone else doesn’t do either. And good for you.
And here is my “but”. I hope you haven’t bought into the claim that there is proof that anthropomorphic carbon is even a minor contributor to global warming. (Is it OK to say “global warming” here instead of “climate change”?)
The way you effect your presence on earth should be emulated by people regardless of bogus AGW claims.
Don’t worry, the salmonella that cloth bags carry around will kill far more people than global warming ever will.
People exhale carbon dioxide and plants and trees use it to produce oxygen. So produce all you want. They’ll just be more oxygen and bigger trees!
At the moment I use old plastic bags as trash can liners. Some stores have bins set up to deposit them for proper recycling. Makes me sick to see them blowing around in the wind; litterbugs suck! If bio-degradable ones were produced people would probably complain though. Anyone who remembers the whole Sun Chips debacle will know what I am talking about. For those that don’t… Basically Frito Lay started packaging its Sun Chips line in bio-degradable bags. A few months later they announced they would be going back to the old packaging. Nothing was inherently wrong with the functionality of the bio-bags. They did however crinkle a little louder than the old ones. Due to much consumer complaining that the bags made too much noise, Frito Lay pulled the plug on the bio-bags. And I really, really wish that I was making that $h1t up. I am afraid that it speaks volumes about the selfish dark side of human nature.
I call BS on the fact that cloth bags carry salmonella. Food comes in packaging: light cardboard, or plastic bags. Even produce gets put in plastic bags. No actual food touches the insides of my cloth bags. I don’t carry produce loose in them.
Re #28, ±
I know bobbo was trying to rattle my cage a little, but that’s ok. I’m sure the religious folk here don’t like some of my comments /opinions on religion.
AGW? that’s why I originally took the name Skeptic. Although we do put a lot of carbon into the air (compared to other animals), and I’m sure it must have some effect (positive and/or negative and/or a little or a lot), it appears to me that the ugliest qualities of politics, greed and fame have infected the science of Climatology. I don’t trust any of them, and their political counterparts. Climate is changing as it always does, and all predictions of dire consequences (avoiding positive predictions of course) from the well organized AGW pundits have fallen short or dissipated completely. I’m actually sick of arguing about it and I’ll just wait for the other shoe to drop. The world can’t just instantly stop using oil, we are too dependent. Alea iacta est.
# 33 Skeptic
the religion of Climatology
Here’s what I don’t get. I buy a bagged item at a store, and the clerk sticks it into another bag.
Buy a ballpoint pen, and you get it stuffed in a bag and handed to you.
Buy a box of bandaids, each bandaid individually wrapped, and the group of bandaids inside a sealed box….the clerk puts that into a bag.
Skeptic–I suppose you can read in what you wish and further that there is a little bit of everything in everything we do?
I can’t go around challenging people most of the time and not be charged with it most of the time. Your mileage (most) will vary.
It is interesting that the different grades of oil can be pumped out of the ground, refined, and the different uses all get used up? I’d think there should be some fraction of it that just gets thrown away–or burned up most likely as a low grade boiler fuel?
Not a rattle, but a reminder to all that America wastes 70% of our energy on vampire/standby devices. Its a waste.
This thread does raise some interesting facets of the costs/benefits of sequestering carbon, pro’s and con’s, but enough rattling.
What is missing, as others have observed, is the use of reusable (usually cloth) bags – which can serve for many years and trips to the store.
I made my wife a few maybe 25 years ago, long before they became ubiquitous; those original bags [made with recycled material!] are still in use. And of course they do get washed once in awhile.
We still get plastic bags from time to time, and use them to line the trash can at the end of their life. Or as trash bags on camping trips, etc…
I also get more of these [now ubiquitous] reusable cloth bags at the local Goodwill thrift store [for $1.49/lb!], which I use instead of the plastic bags they provide.
Seems that some people don’t hang on to the reusable bags very long – so it is possible to acquire them for next to nothing, and return them to service after they have been discarded.
I have lots of them, some of which are used for food and some for other stuff… And I try to keep a couple on the front seat of my vehicle, where they’ll get used the next time I need them.
In any event: regardless of the type of bag, they all get used until they are no longer usable…they don’t get thrown away while they are still good for something. And when they do get thrown away, they are full of trash – not IN the trash.
[We also reuse paper bags, recycle them only after they are no longer of any use.]
Another thing: if I don’t need a bag, I mention it at the point of sale and carry stuff away in my hands, without the extra packaging. Just seems like common sense to me….
Whole Foods switched to paper bags. Before that I use to use their bags as trash liner. Now that they switched to paper bags, I need to get another plastic bag as trash liner, and one bag to throw away the Whole Foods paper bag. Plus Whole Foods used larger stronger bags than the typical grocery store, so it was as good as two of those. So that meant a switch to paper bags ended up with my using 3 bags for every one bag replaced with paper.
Plastic bags vs paper is meaningless in terms of carbon sequestration, if you are worried about global warming.
According to one site, each kg of plastic creates 6kg of CO2 emissions, and they estimate 30g weight per bag. They also list 35KG per year plastic produced per person worldwide. So that is about 250 billion KG per year. 35% of that is packaging, so 85 billion KG per year produced, yields 510 billion KG of carbon emissions, which is 510 megatons, which is 1.5%, a higher number than I expected. Now, this is mitigated by 2 factors. One, packaging doesn’t mean just plastic bags, so the percentage is reduced here by some unknown amount. Also, the 6KG CO2 emissions per KG is production and incineration. If the plastic bag is being sequestered, then the number drops by a factor of 3. So you are down to a max of .5% of carbon emissions.
Re:#36, Bobbo, I don’t mind being challenged (rattled) It’s the spice of threads like DU. If we all agreed this would be a boring place and it probably wouldn’t survive as a blog. You do make a good point that we waste a lot of electricity on standby devices.
What I really don’t understand is the circuitry of delivering all that power. I’ve tried to look this up with little success. What happens to the excess power generated minute by minute. Let’s say the demand in area A is hovering around 10000 to 12000 kilowatts. The power company has to deliver say 13000 kilowatts as insurance against spikes. What happens to all the unused power? Is it wasted?
Where I live, the power company advertised a lot to save power. They exchanged old Christmas lights with free leds, they encouraged people to turn off lights, and doled out incentives buy CFL’s, etc, etc. Well it worked so well that they had to raise our electricity rates by 30% to cover a corresponding drop in revenue. The same thing happened with our water. Everyone was asked to conserve, lawns were left browning in the summer, and the water rates went up suddenly to cover the drop in revenue. To emphasize this, there is no shortage of water here as we have had 10 years of higher than average rainfall, too wet for some farmers.