Are Biodegradable Plastic Bags a Better Alternative to Reusable Shopping Bags? By David Kraft At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

What is the best solution for our current plastic bag problem? Reusable shopping bags? Biodegradable plastic bags? Many people believe that biodegradable bags are the best solution because they are, well, biodegradable. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily true. Biodegradable bags present problems of their own which can be avoided if we all begin using reusable shopping bags instead. The purpose of this article is to explain the problems that biodegradable bags present and show how reusable shopping bags are truly the best solution for all of our shopping bag needs.

In a life cycle analysis of different types of disposable bags (plastic, biodegradable plastic, paper, etc.), the American Chemistry Council concluded that biodegradable plastic bags required nearly 3 times the amount of energy to produce than regular plastic bags (polyethylene). Further, four times the amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) was emitted during their production and 18 times the amount of water was used to produce the biodegradable bags when compared to the regular plastic bags. This begs the question as to whether the end-life benefits of biodegradable bags make up for the extra energy and resource consumption in their creation. Chances are that the answer is no. Further, there is no reason why we need either biodegradable bags or plastic bags to consume energy and pollute our environment in the first place! We can use reusable bags and avoid most of these issues!

Biodegradable plastic bags also cannot be recycled with regular plastic bags, which creates another disadvantage to their use. Since they can't be recycled easily, most are thrown away, where they are taken to landfills. Guess what they do in landfills? Biodegrade? Nope! They go there and sit for a long, long time! Even though they are made to be biodegradable, they don't biodegrade in landfills due to the way that landfills are managed today. In fact, not much actually biodegrades in a landfill because most landfills are routinely covered in layers of dirt to keep the smell down.

The only option to "responsibly" dispose of biodegradable bags is to compost them, yet there are only about 100 facilities in the US that compost biodegradable plastic bags. As a result, most end up in the same place as regular plastic bags - in a landfill, or as litter in our cities, towns, oceans, rivers, creeks, and so on. Admittedly, biodegradable bags that end up as litter will eventually biodegrade, but the bottom line is that biodegradable bags are not turning out to be the answer that everyone thought they would be.

The best thing we can all do is begin using reusable shopping bags. Reusable shopping bags require energy to produce, but since they can be used for so long, the energy required per use of each reusable bag is much less than paper, plastic, and/or biodegradable bags. Reusable bags can also serve other purposes – as travel bags, beach bags, or bags for taking things to your next pot luck dinner. It’s a simple decision when you look at the facts – stop worrying about whether or not biodegradable bags are any good and start using some reusable shopping bags with the knowledge that you are using the best alternative.

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