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Top 10 Myths About Plastic Grocery Bags

Plastic bag bans are spreading like wildfire across the country.

No. In fact, plastic bags have not been banned anywhere, not even in San Francisco. San Francisco is requiring that larger grocery stores and larger chain pharmacies use paper bags or compostable plastic bags instead of 100% recyclable bags. Contrary to popular belief, there is a growing movement to increase access to recycle plastic bags – not eliminate them. New Jersey, Connecticut, and cities in California have all taken recent action to table legislation that would ban certain types of plastic bags and instead are now looking to implement plastic bag recycling programs.

Paper grocery bags are a better environmental choice than plastic bags.

Plastic bags are 100% recyclable and for all environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste – those of paper bags are significantly greater than that of plastic grocery bags: Plastic bags use 40% less energy to produce and generate 80% less solid waste than paper.(1) Paper bags generate 70% more emissions, and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags. (2) Even paper bags made from 100% recycled fiber use more fossil fuels than plastic bags.(3)

Plastic bags are the largest component of landfills and the primary component of litter.

The item most frequently encountered in landfills is paper. On average, it accounts for more than 40% of a landfill's contents.(4) Newspapers alone take up as much as 13% of landfill space.(5) Cigarette butts, chewing gum, and candy wrappers account for about 95% of all litter in the English-speaking world.(6) Education, as well as responsible use and disposal of all materials and products, is the key to reducing litter.

Plastic grocery bags take 1,000 years to decompose in landfills.

Virtually nothing – not paper, food, plastic or even compostable or bio degradable products – decompose in today’s landfills, because they are actually designed to be as stable and dry as possible. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project, has shown that when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.

Plastic bags feed America’s addiction to oil.

Plastic bags are extraordinarily energy-efficient to manufacture. Eighty percent of the plastic used to make plastic bags in the U.S. comes from North American Natural Gas, not oil.(7) Less than .05% of a barrel of oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the US while 93% - 95% of every barrel of crude oil is burned for fuel and heating purposes.(8) Although they are made from natural gas or oil, plastic bags actually consume less fossil fuels during their lifetime than do compostable plastic and paper bags.(9)

Compostable bags can degrade in backyard composts.

In order to breakdown, compostable bags must be sent to an industrial composting facility, not backyard piles or municipal composting centers. There are very few of these facilities in the U.S. and where these facilities are not available, compostable bags will sit in landfills because they can’t be recycled.

For people who live near water, paper bags are the environmentally friendly choice to protect marine wildlife.

Since paper bag production has more negative environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste than plastic grocery bags, they’re not a solution. Recycling and proper disposal of all products would make sure that any threat to the environment, including wildlife, would be reduced.

Low recycling rates for plastic bags prove recycling them doesn't work.

Recycling does work. The problem is not everyone knows that plastic grocery bags are 100% recyclable and not everyone has access to plastic bag recycling in their community. A national at-store plastic bag recycling program would bring the recycling solution to everyone and increase rates. One Southern supermarket chain has such a program, and recycles more than 20% of the volume of plastic bags that it provides to customers.

Recycling plastic bags is too expensive.

The price of not recycling them is high. Recycling can help save resources and minimize the amount of waste going to landfills. Also, recycling helps reduce litter, as bags are contained and stored. Its worth noting that it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.(10)

There’s no demand for recycled plastic.

Today there is a growing market for recycled plastic that didn’t exist 15 years ago. It’s also cheaper now to use recycled plastic than to obtain new materials, increasing potential for more recycling of used plastic bags. Recycled plastic grocery and shopping bags are currently being made into hundreds of new consumer and commercial products.

Plastic Recycling Statistics & Factoids

• About 100 BILLION plastic bags are sold annually around the world.
• Industry figures show that 90% of all grocery bags are plastic.
• Improved technology increases the durability and lifespan of bags, while reducing materials needed in the manufacturing process. Plastic grocery sacks were 2.3 mils (thousands of an inch) thick in 1976 and were down to 1.75 mils by 1984. In 1989, new technology gave us the same strength and durability in a bag only 0.7 mil thick.
• Plastics are lighter than many alternative materials, which translates to a savings in energy use. They have consistently reduced the weight of truck payloads and allowed companies to ship more products in fewer trucks.
• More than 2.8 million plastic grocery bags can be delivered in one truck.
• Bags have been used as “baggies” and sandwich bags since 1957; dry-cleaning bags since 1958; bread packaging since the mid-1960s; produce bags in grocery stores since 1969; merchandise bags at major department stores since 1974; grocery bags at the check stand since 1977.
• The first consumer plastic bag recycling began at supermarkets in 1990
• There is a growing market for recycled plastic that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Today recyclers make 15-20 cents per pound of collected bags. It’s also cheaper now to use recycled plastic than to obtain new materials, increasing potential for more recycling and for more use of recycled bags.
• When incinerated in waste-to-energy facilities, plastic bags yield more energy than coal and burn more cleanly as well.
• According to the American Plastics Council, we're only using 25% of our nation's recycling capacity.
• Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates one job. Land filling 10,000 tons of waste creates six jobs. Recycling 10,000 tons of waste creates 36 jobs.
• The national recycling rate of 30% saves the equivalent of more than five billion gallons of gasoline, reducing dependence on foreign oil by 114 million barrels.
• Most plastics will last from 200 - 400 years in a landfill before biodegrading. A plastic bottle can take more than 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill
• Recycling 35% of our trash reduces global warming emissions equivalent to taking 36 million cars of the road.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• Every hour, Americans use 4 million plastic bottles; yet, we recycle less than 25% of them.
• Recycling one ton of PET plastic containers saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
• 30% of recycled HDPE bottles go into making new bottles.
• By using plastic in packaging, American product manufacturers save enough energy each year to power a city of 1,000,000 homes for over three years.
• In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his/ her children.
• Each of us generates on average 4.4 lbs. of waste per day.