Paper or Plastic?

Ianqui writes: Circumstances have brought me back to the grocery store bags issue. I freely admit that I originally assumed that paper bags must be more efficient than plastic ones, and that I was wrong. A Google search on paper vs. plastic brings up many websites, but a study by Franklin and Associates (albeit in 1990) summarized by the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment, seems to be what most people cite.

Here are some of their conclusions. Note that in making their comparisons, Franklin and Associates examine the amount of energy needed to produce the bag, and the pollutants resulting from the bag throughout its lifespan. Also, a single plastic bag carries about 2x the amount of goods that go into a paper bag. However, stores typically use improper bagging techniques with plastic bags (update: I take this to mean that they double-bag and possibly don’t put as many items in the bag as they could), so to be as realistic as possible, all of the evaluations below compare 2 plastic bags to 1 paper bag. You’ll see that even using the 2-to-1 plastic-to-paper ratio, plastic comes out as less energy intensive.

More after the jump at The Oil Drum.