Paper or Plastic

The use of plastic bags is still bugging me. We use 1,000,000 plastic bags on this Earth every minute.

According to The Earth Policy Institute, the plastic bag was invented in Sweden in 1962.  The single-use plastic shopping bag was first popularized by Mobil Oil in the 1970s in an attempt to increase its market for polyethylene, a fossil-fuel derived compound.

And the question is not paper vs. plastic, because they’re both bad:

• Both plastic and paper bags gobble up valuable natural resources for a single use, disposable product.

• Both have negative impacts on wildlife and pollute our environment.
• Both create significant toxic by-products during their lifecycles
• Neither is effectively recycled.

The answer is to use something that can be used again and again.   And that means remembering to bring the reusable bag with you.  You can also carry small items without a bag, especially if you’re just going to your car.  So it’s really whether you – and I – will change our single use habit and put reuseable bags in our cars, purses and homes so that they’re available to use when you need them! The following graphic appeared in The Washington Post in 2007 and helps put this all in perspective: