Bring back the plastic! New Study shows paper bags make five times more carbon emissions

By Jo Nova

Right about now the Greens should be rushing to reverse all the plastic bans

Now we know that CO2 is aerial fertilizer and feeds the world, but this study highlights the crazy unscientific randomness of environmental policies chanted by the same people who say “follow the science”.

It turns out paper shopping bags produce five times as much CO2 over their lifetime as plastic HDPE bags do. Apparently, plastic bags might strangle a turtle, but in the mind of a dedicated Green, paper bags could be causing the sixth mass extinction. Oh the dilemma?

A new study in Environmental Science and Technology looked at 16 applications of plastics in modern life found that in 15 of them, the plastic version produced fewer emissions than the paper, concrete, steel, glass or aluminum sort. And these 16 applications accounted for about 90% of global plastic volume. It seems that with paper bags people often “double bag” their groceries because the bags are prone to breaking, and in the end, in landfill, the paper waste is degraded into methane.

THE DAILY CHART: PLASTIC MADNESS

Steven Hayward, Powerline

So we went and banned plastic straws and plastic bags in much of California and elsewhere because they are made from fossil fuels and a solitary turtle was once found snorting fentanyl through a plastic straw, or something. In any case, Greta/Gaia was displeased, so plastic products had to go.

Well guess what: the substitutes for plastic products mostly produce higher greenhouse gas emissions than plastic. Not by just a little but by a lot.

If the Greens gave a toss about CO2 emissions, you’d think they’d be pretty careful to make sure their own plans were not wrecking the planet. And, ipso facto, oops, if they did the wrong thing, you’d think they’d want to fix that like all life on Earth depended it? Unless, of course, they were attention seeking totalitarians who just wanted to boss people around for the sake of it?

This is not the first time studies like these have surfaced. We know from what the EcoWorriers won’t do, that they don’t give a damn about carbon emissions. It’s all a big show of virtue signalling, a grand theatre where they pretend to care, and their friends pretend to be impressed.

Only people who want to fry coral reefs would choose paper bags over plastic ones, eh?

Even though we don’t recycle PET bottles much, they produce one half the emissions of cans, and one third of the emissions of glass:

PET bottles have the lowest emissions impact because of their low weight and low energy intensity during production. In comparison, aluminum cans release twice the emissions of PET bottles, and glass bottles release three times the emissions. PET has the lowest recycling rate (Table S3) among the three alternative containers and the highest emissions when incinerated at end of life (WtE). However, in this case, the production stage dominates the overall emissions, and here, PET has a much lower impact than glass and aluminum (Figure S3).

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c05191

Could a member of Greenpeace even speak the words? PVC pipes are better for climate change (if you care about CO2):

Pet food in tins produces three times the emissions of pet food in little plastic pouch things:

Even plastic milk bottles produce less emissions than cartons do, and every little bit matters as they say:

Obviously Greens will be bragging about the plastic fuel tank in their hybrid cars, right?

…and their acrylic carpet. Save the whales, buy linoleum?

The whole study finds virtually no reason to swap plastic goods for something else:

We conclude that applying material substitution strategies to plastics never really makes sense. This is because plastics’ inherent properties─strong, lightweight, easy to shape, customizable, and comparatively low-GHG emissions─make it the preferred material for minimizing emissions across most products.

h/t Bally

REFERENCE

1. Replacing Plastics with Alternatives Is Worse for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Most Cases

   Fanran Meng, Miguel Brandão, and Jonathan M Cullen
   Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (6), 2716-2727

   DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c05191