Modern Organic Blog

You may not know that the question of paper or plastic is a far bigger question for eco friendly conscious people than you would think. The use of plastic bags is much more rampant in the market than paper bags because of many reasons and one such reason is that the cost of plastic bags is much less than the paper bags.

Manufacturing of Paper Bags:

The manufacturing of paper bags is a long and complicated process. These bags are made from the trees and they have their environmental cost as well. The use of trees for making these bags is not good for the environment and the forest habitat. This results into long run damage to the ecology. Also the cutting down of trees and carrying them to the manufacturing units requires the use of heavy machinery and the transportation then consumes much of the fuel. After these trees reach the desired place, there is a long process of drying the trees and extracting the pulp, then bleaching and washing of the pulp and adding the color, etc. This whole process requires a lot of resources which can be otherwise utilized for better reasons.

After Use of Paper bags:

There are different possibilities like either you can compost them or throw them or you can recycle these bags. The recycling is again a complicated and tricky process and requires the use of a lot of resources again.

Manufacturing of Plastic Bags:

Plastic bags are made completely differently from the paper bags. Plastic bags are the side products of oil and are produced by the refining process of oil. The big resource input which is used in the production of plastic bags is the energy in the form of electricity.

Recycling of the Plastic Bags:

Plastic bags are recycled but it is not an easy process and requires the melting and casting of the plastic again. This is also an energy consuming process and after the recycling, the quality of the plastic gets hard and this cannot be recycled again.

Which bag to use: Paper or Plastic?

The comparison between these two bags can be made by looking at the energy consumption, environment emissions and all other costs of recycling and production. According to some statistics, plastic bags are better as they consume less amount of energy and other air emissions while paper bags consume more resources than the plastic bags.

So to support the go green cause, the bags which consume less of the resources should be used.