I (Litsa) live in a city where there’s no community wide recycling program!?! This makes it difficult to stay on course with recycling plastic bottles, bags, paper, cans, and more! I bag cans and donate them to individuals that recycle the scrap metal for cash. Our paper products are transported to BIG, red bins that a local recycling company has placed in our town! The company totes the recycled paper to a neighboring city for recycling! But plastic……it’s everywhere!?! Bottles, bags, etc.
I want to recycle but I’m using extra gas & personal energy to try to make a dent in our family’s recycling efforts with no REAL, easy way to recycle everything our household uses—always an eco-quandary dilemma + personal choice of energy/time!?! Thus, I was intrigued with this question that was posed in Real Simple (April 2014):
Which is the lesser evil, a plastic grocery bag or a paper one?
“The paper bag. Yes, it does take more energy, fuel, and water to manufacture paper than plastic. But once a paper bag exits the checkout line, it’s gentler on the environment than its plastic counterpart, and that’s what matters most, says Logan Welde, a staff attorney for the Clean Air Council. The reasons: People are more likely to recycle paper bags than plastic ones. (To recycle plastic bags, you typically need to find a store that accepts them.) And even when paper is thrown in the trash, it decomposes fully. Plastic does not biodegrade, says Allen Hershkowitz, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. When a plastic bag becomes litter, it sticks around forever!
So which will it be for your household, paper or plastic!?! Or better yet? Choose Reusable Bags—but don’t forget to WASH Your Reusable Shopping Bags!
Quoted Notes Credit Real Simple April 2014
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