Paper Bags Controversy

In the last few years, a lot of controversy has been coming up about paper and plastic. The debate that comes up touches on which material is more harmful to the environment. Paper and plastic bags are both harmful to the environment in their own way, but which one is worse? Paper bags are said to use harmful chemicals and tons of fresh water, but facts will prove plastic bags to be much harder on the environment.

The first thing that needs to be taken into consideration is how the bags are made. Paper bags use trees.They start off by cutting down trees, which have to dry out for three years ( Dunn, 2008, p.1). After they are dried out, the trees are stripped of their bark and cut into one-inch squares. High heat and pressure cook the

Many facilities burn the bags, which emits harmful toxins and pollution into the air, or they send them off to the landfill. So even when they are thrown into the recycling bin at stores, most of them don’t actually get recycled. Less than 1% of the bags actually end up recycled because it can be a very expensive and complicated process to recycle a bag ( Wagner, nd, p.2). Plastic bags have a life ranging from 10 to 1,000 years (Tsong, 2015, p.1). This is a problem because many people don’t reuse them. They are not durable enough to withstand much more than one trip home from the grocery store. Once the bags are thrown in the trash they are either burned or thrown into a landfill. Both of these have a bad effect on the environment. According to Bernstein (1986), “ Paper bags are recyclable and biodegradable and may even have been recycled from a previous existence, while the plastic ones endanger public health”(p.1). Plastic bags don’t go anywhere, meaning our land is slowly filling up with

They are responsible for suffocating animals. In an article written by Wagner (nd) it states, “ One bag has the potential to unintentionally kill one animal per every three months due to unintentional digestion or inhalation”( p.2). There are 1.5 to 3 million plastic bags littered in some places (Wagner, n.d, p.2 ). That means a lot of animals die from suffocating or choking on plastic bags alone. Plastic bags are harmful, and it takes hundreds of years for them to go away. They are most likely to kill an animal before they decompose.

There’s not only an effect on animals, but there’s an effect on people. The litter from the bags isn’t an appealing sight on the roads and in the towns. The animals being killed by the plastic bags will soon affect people as well. When they are littered and shredded to pieces, they can plug up storm drains, flow in rivers, and litter the