Paper or Plastic?

[viscousmemories]

I used to opt for paper over plastic in the early 90's, but I swear an environmental engineer I knew told me they were really equally damaging to the environment in different ways. But the landfill argument makes a lot of sense. The further you have to go to dispose of waste the more resources have to be consumed to do it. So it seems logical to favor biodegradable shopping bags. I think I will from now on.

[godfry n. glad]

An environmental engineer, huh? For who, Gulf? DuPont? GAF? I'd like to have heard his/her rationale. I've heard the argument that any recycling is energy wasteful, but never that paper was as dangerous a waste product as plastic film.

What I really would like to see is a major societal rethink about packaging. Consider how much excess packaging our purchased products come in. While I understand the need for sanitary packaging of some foodstuffs, why do plastic toys need to be triple packaged in paper and plastic that takes a sharp implement to unpackage it?

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

An environmental engineer, huh? For who, Gulf? DuPont? GAF? I'd like to have heard his/her rationale. I've heard the argument that any recycling is energy wasteful, but never that paper was as dangerous a waste product as plastic film.

Actually sorry, it was an environmental engineering student who rented a room in the same house I did in the early 90's. He convinced me that recycling at all was a Bad Thing™ because at that time (according to him) we had a surplus of recyclables and a dearth of companies using recycled materials, so the energy expended managing the recyclables was more damaging than the overfilling of landfills. Around 2000 someone convinced me that this wasn't an issue, so I started recycling again. But I retained a belief that plastic and paper bags were equally bad for differing reasons.

[viscousmemories]

Um, Shea... I think the NCPA is shady. Don't know where I got that idea, but here's something I found just now:

Corporate Front Group Alert: National Center for Policy Analysis Seeks to Undermine Global Warming Legislation
12-Jul-04
corporate front groups

Here's another all-Republican, all corporate front group that calls itself a "think tank": National Center for Policy Analysis. Try to find where their funding comes from, and all you will get is a crude "pie" showing that most comes from "foundations", followed by corporations. No foundations are named - probably because they are all rightwing money-funnelers - and no corporations, either (ExxonMobil probably tops the list). Scroll through the list of "experts" - all are conservative businessfolk of some sort - no real scientists. Their token "doctor" led the fight to defeat Clinton's health care reforms. But the media eats their propaganda up. http://www.ncpa.org/abo/ Just check out this list of citations! Now the NCPA is trying to undermine global warming legislation.

-source

Here's their own blurb:

The National Center of Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. The NCPA's goal is to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector. Topics include reforms in health care, taxes, Social Security, welfare, criminal justice, education and environmental regulation.

-source

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Um, Shea... I think the NCPA is shady. Don't know where I got that idea, but here's something I found just now:

Here's their own blurb:

Shady ain't the half of it.

These folks are standing up for voluntary personal accounts, which they say is "good for Social Security." Damn...Even Dumbya the wonder chimapanzee has admitted that such a claim is wrong.

They are also pushing for a value-added tax to raise additional federal revenue. That's a national sales-tax. Tax the poor to support the rich.

These folks are running dogs licking the butts of those who think of themselves as "the ruling class." Sycophants to the rich and powerful.

Good source, LadyShea.

[LadyShea]

The NCPA site is the first I came across, however the information is found on many sources and is attributed to one report attributed to Clark Wiseman

Although many landfills are close to capacity, this is because they are designed to have a short life span. There is no shortage of room for landfills. Clark Wiseman of Washington State's Gonzaga University points out that a single square of land, 114 km on each side and about 37 metres deep, could accommodate all of the garbage generated in the United States for the next 1000 years (Wiseman, 1990). This is one tenth of one percent of the land area of the continental US

Source of information: Wiseman, Clark A. (1990). US Wastepaper Recycling Policies: Issues and Effects. Resources for the Future. Discussion Paper ENR 90-14.

Source of Quote here

Good source, LadyShea.

How about the primary source? Got any criticisms against it?

[LadyShea]

Earlier you said this "I've yet to see a timely replacement of petrochemicals".

What did you mean, exactly? Did you mean plastic uses more petrochemicals than paper to manufacture?

Paper bags use high amounts of wood, petroleum, and coal. A single paper bag uses the energy equivalent of 550 kJ of wood as feedstock. It also uses 500 kJ of petroleum and 350 kJ of coal for process energy. The total amount of energy used by a single paper bag is 1,680 kJ.

The feedstock materials in plastic bags are natural gas and petroleum. Two plastic bags use 990 kJ of natural gas, 240 kJ of petroleum, and 160 kJ of coal. The energy used for two plastic bags is 1,470 kJ. Two plastic bags use 87% the amount of energy used by one paper. http://www.ilea.org/

ILEA Mission Statement
The Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment (ILEA) is an environmental advocacy organization headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Like many environmental organizations, we are fundamentally motivated by a desire to save the maximum possible portion of Earth's biodiversity, and to maintain a healthy environment for humanity.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

The NCPA site is the first I came across, however the information is found on many sources and is attributed to one report attributed to Clark Wiseman

How about the primary source? Got any criticisms against it?

As presented, yes. I doubt that anyone can predict out 1000 years, first off. But given that, he has suggested that the hole be a given size. I'd be curious as to what rate of accumulation he took into consideration. Was it shrugged off as "at current rates"? Or was there a consideration of population increase and per person generation?

Second, did you consider the size of the hole being posited? 114 km = 71 mi. So, that's 71 miles square, or 5016 square miles. That's at a uniform depth of 37 m, or 121 ft. That's an area larger than at least one state. 12 storeys deep. That spot in Kansas is suddenly several counties large.

Third, the point is that such could never be done, but there is a pressing demand to find places that can take our garbage. We WILL continue to produce it, but our attitude seems to be one of "out of sight, out of mind" and once it's gone, it's no longer an issue. Just find another place.

What we require in terms of space for disposal of our waste is piddling compared to the rest of the world. But no matter where we decide to put it there will be a cost for us and a cost for somebody else. The point is that if we remove a huge amount of it and reuse it, we don't keep having to find new places, as quickly, to get rid of it.

Yes... Paper is currently item showing up as a large proportion of the waste stream. It has two possible lives other than being buried in a landfill: recycled into paper again, or burned to produce energy. It shouldn't be buried at all. Archeology into landfills is great. Finding that paper is a huge component is no surprise. And yet, it is the easiest to separate and remove....

Plastic is, by volume, a lesser component. It is, however, on the rise and a relatively recent arrival in the waste stream. It's problem is that, unlike organic items like foods and paper, it's biodegrability is abyssmal. It's even more pernicious in that paper items, once easily recycleable, become much more limited in their reuse, once they are plastic coated, which is increasingly common. The issue is how long it lasts once disposed of, not how much energy goes into making it.....somehow, nobody seems to attach a cost to that and it never gets dealt with in energy usage models.

I have no quarrel with the relative amounts of energy required to make plastic film bags over paper bags. But one takes multiple human lifetimes to breakdown and be reusable in the natural environment, while the other, biodegrades relatively quickly. I have no doubt that vast amounts of paper, like bundled newspapers, could last readably for quite some time.

I shall have to read about the Garbage Project. If it's who I think it is, he was the budding guru when I was just getting out of the business. He was doing great stuff back in 1980's.