The history of plastic bags in the United States began in 1979, and by the 1990s, plastic bags had taken over the world. The obvious advantage for retailers was that they were much cheaper than paper bags. Buyers preferred them because durable, weather-resistant plastic proved to be relatively easier to transport. It's no surprise that today plastic is seen as the planet's number one enemy.
Plastic accumulates in landfills, has contaminated rivers, seas and oceans and has even reached our bodies. However, no matter how contradictory it may seem, plastic bags were actually created to save the planet. That's what the son of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin, who created them in 1959, says. Plastic bags were developed as an alternative to paper bags, whose production led to the felling of forests. The new alternative proposed greater durability, which meant that they could be used over and over again, many more times than a paper bag could handle.
This means that paper bags can break down in the soil with the help of bacteria. It's different from plastic bags that can take a thousand years to break down. Regardless of whether the bag is made of plastic, paper or another material, the most sustainable option is the bag you already have. In general, it's essential to make the effort to reuse any bag you have in your possession and to dispose of it responsibly.
One of the main advantages of plastic bags is that, compared to other types of shopping bags, producing them has the lowest environmental impact. Plastic bags were patented by a company called Celloplast and, by the mid-1960s, they were already actively replacing paper and cloth alternatives in Europe. Although the production of these bags uses resources such as oil, it produces less carbon emissions, waste and harmful by-products than the production of cotton or paper bags. In addition to filling landfills and turning into something horrible, plastic bags that become garbage endanger many facets of the environment, including marine life and the food chain.
Recycling plastic bags is a difficult task; they fly around the recycling plant and get stuck in the machinery. To have a comparable environmental footprint (encompassing climate change and other environmental effects) to that of plastic bags, a cotton bag may have to be used thousands of times. In the early 1980s, two of the largest grocery chains in the U.S. In the US, Kroger and Safeway, switched to using plastic bags.
The discussion about “paper bags versus plastic bags” will continue, especially since the increasing use of plastic is already massive and worrying. Using studies that indicate that plastic bags are better for the environment than paper or cloth is fake. This is because the production of paper bags requires more energy and water and, in addition, they are heavier than plastic bags, making them more expensive to transport. Currently, most plastic bags are not recycled and end up in landfills or pollute the environment, where they take up to 1000 years to degrade.
In addition to varying widely in terms of their environmental compatibility, there is the possibility that reusable bags may not be used, as consumers should remember to take them with them to the store.
