Paper or Plastic Bags? Is One Really Better for the Environment Than the Other?

by James N. Katsaounis

You cannot leave a grocery store after shopping without making one last decision – paper or plastic. Since plastic bags were first introduced in 1977, consumers, environmentalists, and manufacturers of paper and plastic grocery bags have been debating if one is better for the environment than the other.

Plastics bags are light, compact, can be reused and take up less place in landfills. On the other hand, they are made from nonrenewable petroleum resources and are not easily biodegradable. Paper bags are made from renewable resources, can be easily reused or recycled and are more easily biodegradable. Yet there is a cost factor to be considered. Paper bags cost three times what plastic bags cost grocery stores.

“It cost us approximately six cents per paper bag and two cents per plastic bag,” said Tom, a manager at Super Fresh located on Columbus Boulevard in Philadelphia. “We don’t have a written policy on what types of bags we should use, but of course we prefer that our employees use plastic unless the customer requests paper,” he added.

It only makes business sense that a grocery store would prefer that plastic be used over paper when it is a third of the cost. But are companies making it policy to use plastic over paper, and what are they doing to encourage recycling of paper and plastic bags, if anything?

I contacted seven grocery stores in the Philadelphia region representing four different grocery store chains. Of the seven stores contacted, I visited three to see what type of bag, paper or plastic, was most commonly being offered.

Of the four grocery stores contacted, only ACME Markets had admitted to having a policy for employees to use plastic over paper. “It’s a verbal policy to use plastic and might be mentioned in a training video, but I don’t know of it being written anywhere,” said Tim, a grocery clerk at ACME on Roosevelt Boulevard. “We have recycling barrels in the store so people can drop their bags off…it gets filled all the time and has to be emptied at least twice a week,” Tim added.

The Fresh Grocer, Super Fresh, and Whole Foods Market, all prefer their employees use plastic as well, but managers at these stores say they do not have verbal or written policies on which type of bags should be used, that the choice is the customers.
All four of the grocery chains contacted for this story say they offer their customers the ability to have their paper or plastic bags recycled, but only Whole Foods Markets has a program that encourages recycling by offering a five cent discount per bag reused at the counter, whether paper, plastic or cloth and it does not even have to be one of their own bags.

“We are probably the most environmentally-conscious supermarket,” claims Denise a Whole Foods Market supervisor at the Pennsylvania Avenue location. This is a terrific program to encourage recycling as long as the customers are educated about it, and more specifically, all Whole Foods Market employees. Tanya, a cashier at the same location knew nothing about the program when asked, nor was it mentioned by the South Street location manager, Byron, when asked about what Whole Foods Markets does to encourage recycling.

None of the grocery stores were able to say what happens to the bags that are returned to be recycled, other than that the bags are sent back to their distribution centers to be handled. The closest idea of what may happen with recycled plastic bags came from Calvin, a manager at Super Fresh on South Street and an employee with the company for 25 years. “Ten years ago I remember learning something about the plastic being used to make park benches, but that was years ago.”

There are many factors to take into consideration when weighing whether plastic or paper is better. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website reports that plastic grocery bags consume 40 percent less energy to produce and generate 80 percent less solid waste than paper bags. However, plastic bags can take 5-10 years to decompose whereas paper bags take about a month given the right environment conditions.

The EPA further claims that paper bags generate 70 percent more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastics. And, it takes 91 percent less energy to recycle plastic than paper and four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag than it does for a plastic bag. Landfills today also do not have the right conditions to degrade paper at a faster rate than plastic because modern landfills lack the water, light, oxygen and other elements necessary for decomposition to fully occur.

The GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN) whose mission is “to eliminate the waste of natural and human resources and utilize classic activist strategies to achieve corporate accountability for and public policies to eliminate waste, and to build sustainable communities,” seems to agree with the EPA. An article they quoted from “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices – Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists,” and published on their website, says that plastic bags are environmentally a superior choice. However, paper bags are reused and recycled at a higher rate. That there is “no reason for consumers to feel obliged to use paper sacks or feel guilty if they choose plastic.”

The Sierra Club, another activist organization that has as part of its mission to preserve the environment, agrees with the GRRN. “The energy and other environmental impacts embodied in a plastic bag is somewhat less than in a grocery bag. But paper is easier to recycle, being accepted in most recycling programs. The recycling rate for plastic bags is very low,” according to the Sierra Club website.

Still, plastic bags are a growing problem especially if they are not being recycled. Reusablebags.com, a company that manufactures environmentally friendly fiber tote reusable bags, estimates that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed annually worldwide and the U.S. according to The Wall Street Journal consumes one fifth of that. Four out of five grocery bags in the U.S. are plastic.

Plastic bags have also become such a major litter problem for some countries that Ireland, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, and Bangladesh have created heavy taxes, approximately 20 cents U.S. per bag, or banned the choice of plastic grocery bags altogether. The tax in Ireland, however, did not force people to choose the paper bags, but has caused consumers to switch to the reusable cloth totes according to Joan Roach who reports for National Geographic News.

Ireland used 1.2 billion disposable plastic bags, or 316 per person in 2001, according to Reusablebags.com website. The plastic bag tax introduced in that country in 2002 reduced consumption by 90 percent. Several U.S. cities have considered similar taxes, such as Los Angeles and in some rural areas of Alaska plastic bags have been banned completely.

The Anchorage Daily News reported in 2003 that 30 communities statewide had banned stores from using plastics bags. The plastic bags were becoming such a nuisance that they were commonly spotted snagged in trees or found tangled around salmon and seals.

So will it be paper or plastic? Neither! Studies have shown that neither paper nor plastic is better than the other despite peoples’ disbeliefs. The important thing is to reuse the paper or plastic bags over and over again until they can no longer be used. Better yet, buy yourself a strong cloth tote bag to take with you to the store and forgo having to choose between paper and plastic.