Yesterday I went to Van Heusen outlet at J.M. Road, Pune. After investing (wasting) 3 long hours we have chosen a similar waist coat to which I liked at first st
Anyways I can't tell you about that as my parents might be reading this blog. Hi Mom ! and Hello Dad !, really miss you.
Well that's not the story I want to tell. After 3 hours of mess the sales person packed my waist coat and gave it to me in a paper bag and a thought came in my mind is paper bag really Eco-friendly.
Paper bags are being used rather than using plastic bags but we are forgetting that we are consuming more paper as many of the paper bags are not made up of recycled paper, on one hand various organizations are creating awareness about e-bill and saving paper as much as we can, I still remember the Abhishek Bachchan's advertisement for save paper for IDEA. But We are consuming more paper in forms of bags and wrappers for daily routine activities.
Various manufacturers have said that manufacturing of paper bags consume more energy and water than the plastic bags. According to report for Scottish Government published in year 2009 for a journal "There is misconception that the paper bags are more Eco-friendly than plastic bags but the fact is plastic bags consume less water and energy and produce less pollution including green house emission. "
Let's get to some statistics, approx 220 liters of water is required to manufacture 1000 Plastic bags where as for manufacturing of 1000 paper bags the requirement of water is almost 3800 litres. As far as waste is concerned the plastic bags manufacturing for 10000 bags leads for solid wastes of 9.1 cubic pounds and water borne wastes are almost 1.8 where as manufacturing of 10000 paper bags leads for the wastes of 45.8 cubic pounds in solid wastes and 31.2 that of water borne wastes. Manufacturing of 10000 plastic bags leads for the atmospheric emission of 17.9 cubic pounds and 64.2 to that of paper bags manufacturing for same.
A study by Boustead Consulting and Associates conducted in 2007 says that "It takes almost 4 times as much energy to manufacture the paper bag as it does to manufacture a polythene bag."
If we consider two extreme conditions of 0 % recycling and 100 % recycling then the energy required for manufacturing for 10000 paper bags is 9.7 Bthus in 0% recycling and 7.0 Bthus in case of 100% recycling where as the figures for manufacturing same number of paper bags energy of almost 16.3 Bthus and 9.1 Bthus is required in the respective conditions.
As per the studies, it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than to recycle a pound of paper as the recycling index for plastic and paper is considered.
So replacing plastic bag with paper bags is not that much beneficial to ecology and it's quite destructive as to replace all the plastic bags in one year in Maharashtra we need to cut down 2.2 million trees which is same as chopping 110 sq. kms. so we need to find some other alternative like reusing of bags.
Mr. Bill Rathje, a Garbologist, a fellow at the Archaeology Center of Stanford University and the Director of Garbage project strongly encourages the reusing of the bags. According to him it does not matter weather you are using plastic bag or paper bag as long as you are reusing it. So I would also like to advice to reuse the bag the material choices are either.
I'm Not having any doubt on decision made over ban over plastic polythene bags but the paper bags does not seem to be an appropriate solution over the plastic bags the cloth bags might be but it depends on the cost associated with it. So it's time to think over the issue as we will pull ourselves in one danger from another.
Standard Disclosure: These are my opinions and views based on the facts and figures which I have studied.
