I read something somewhere of plastic bags being made out of petrolium..and petrolium being a non renewable resource..is this true? If so..does this mean that we throw away our plastic bags and can't recycle them at all?
yes, plastic is made from petroleum. Yes, petroleum is non renewable. BUT plastic bags can be recycled. Many stores in my area (Denver metropolitan area) have bins for recycling bags. However, an alternative is usually preferable, such as cloth or (re)using boxes.
huh? since when has paper been as harmful as plastic?!?! paper comes from wood, which is a comparativly renewable source, and in waste form rots away in a very short time with no ill effects in contrast, generally all plastic comes from various forms of oil, unless it's receycled, or the oil has came from an artificial source like coal
no, plastics are degradeable, not bio-degradeable. the bags will break into small pieces, facilitating the breakdown of whateve might be in them, but in human terms, plastic will always be plastic. paper tends to be made from (usually) clearcut area forests replanted with soft pine in the SE US. There is sustainable forestry, but not usually by the companies that get involved in sack making. invest in cloth bags. I get mine at thrift stores. Sure they have advertising, but hey, a patch or paint can fix that. I've been using cloth for 90 percent of my shopping for more than a decade and I have lost only one bag, which was string (like a hammock) and that one was purchased used and frayed. I get occasional plastic grocery bags instead of buying trash bags. I also use a couple plastic bags in my portable paint set up. I guess the bag is used for a couple months before its too grotty, then it is a trash bag for on site clean up (I paint live at festivals). even if you have two bags and still use a couple store-provided bags, that can be 105 bags saved in weekly grocery trips each year. Plus most US chains will give you a nickel credit per bag, about $26 annually with the two bags. I can hit two shows for that, locally. or, my average shopping trip (if broken down weekly ) is about $30, so I get a week of groceries free.
Wood comes from trees and as far as I'm concerned, trees aren't renewable. When trees are cut down, the space is usually taken up by farming and cow raising. the soil is killed and trees can no longer grow there. another thing is that the environment is so different from hundreds of years ago when the trees were just starting and trees can no longer grow to those sizes anymore due to pollutants.
They're generally considered renewable relative to coal and other stuff. It is very much renewable... Finland is one of the biggest exporters of wood, mainly because there wood is of particulary good quality - it grows very slowly in the cold conditions so is more stronger because the rings are more tightly packed. Despite the fact the trees take longer to grow, they actually grow back quicker than they are used. Apparantly it's the same story for peat in there country, something I find surprising because that takes thousands of years to generate! Anyway - even if they were not renewable - consider this: If everything was made out of paper or wood, instead of plastic - the world would be a worse place. Consider house building - a home made exclusivly from wood is many times more eco friendly than one made with bricks and mortar in which lot's of energy and fossil fuels is required to make the bricks and cement, etc. Many lightweight plastic tools could be wood. Wood is also cheaper than plastic in terms of raw material, although is only more expensive in mass production terms because of the labour involved in making items from wood. When trees are cleared for farming - it's just that - "forest clearance". It's not the same as maintaining a working forest as they do where I live, and then every 40 years or so they "harvest" the crop in the same way a crop of maize might be harvested - before replanting after a 5 year break or os. Having said that, I'm not a huge fan of working forests - they are all densly packed and largely impassable, and many have been planted here on peat bogs stretching back thousands of years. Apparantly in England many of the typical coniferous working forests are to be replaced with broadleaf woods which I think is great! Unfortunatly this policy is not going to be the same for Wales though.
Petroleum is part of almost everything. The manufacturing of those things and their transportation both use up petroleum. (The manufacture of a car takes 19% of all the petroleum that it will use during its expected lifetime.) Local sourcing and reusable products are just a start.
I bring reusable cloth bags when I go food shopping. Plastic bags suck for the environment. What moron invented bags that have to be thrown out....?
The main "advantage" of plastic bags is that they can take heavier loads than plastic (better for heavy groceries), are cheap, and maintain strength when wet. Most of the supermarket ones sadly can't be used more than once because they are as thin as they can be (which in some respects is a good thing because they use less plastic). We try to reuse them though - typically as little waste bin liners! I don't know why some stores don't use paperbags more often though, where appropriate. I guess there isn't much plastic in a typical bag though, and being thin they do breakdown than other plastic products. I wouldn't get too much worked up about the bags - consider the products that they hold probably contains far more denser plastic packaging, such as plastic bottles, cartons, etc.
paper bags are often double bagged, meaning to get that gallon of liquid home, you have TWO bags. I see baggers doing this with thin plastic, too. While using one bag per item on some stuff (really, both loaves of bread and the tortillas can go in one bag) while overbagging in the same order. Now that's a job that needs a common sense meter or rigid rules for the "special" department of employees. want to really freak out a bagger? bring ............boxes.
