Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Given our recent posts on the regulation of plastic bags in Ireland, Santa Monica and China, we thought we’d take a quick look at some of the factual differences between plastic and paper bags. Like many green alternatives, the benefits of switching from plastic to paper are not so black-and-white. (Granted Santa Monica proposes to ban plastic and also tax paper.)
Apparently, paper bags that are not made out of recycled material result in 70% more air pollution and 50% more water pollution than the production of plastic bags. Additionally, one pound of plastic can be recycled with 91% less energy than it takes to recycle the equivalent amount of paper. The one clear disadvantage of plastic is that, unlike paper, it is not biodegradable.
[Update: One of our readers noted that the picture above says "I am biodegradable" on the plastic bag, but that we claim that plastic is not biodegradable in this post. According to this link, plastic bags do not biodegrade in any reasonable timeframe, but can photodegrade when exposed to sunlight (which of course is unlikely in a landfill). Therefore, the only way the manufacturer of the bag in the photo above could reasonably claim to be biodegradable would be if the bag was not actually made of polyethylene (the standard process), in which case it would probably not be called a "plastic" bag.]
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
The Chinese government recently mandated that thin plastic shopping bags are to be banned, starting June 1, two months prior to the Summer Olympics in Beijing. According to the AP, in anticipation of this law, China’s largest plastic bag manufacturer has closed its factory. It is unclear to what extent other types of disposal bags will still be allowed. Readers with insight on this topic are encouraged to chime in.
This story is of particular interest given the recent developments regarding the taxation and regulation of plastic carry-out bags in both Ireland and Santa Monica. It will be interesting to compare the results of the Irish method (taxation of bags) to the Santa Monica/Chinese method (outright ban). As we’ve noted before, when solutions like taxation of a problem can be effective (e.g., a 95% decrease in Irish usage of plastic bags), more absolutist options like outright bans seem less desirable and may even be unnecessary.
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Previously we’ve looked at situations where a supposed green alternative proves in practice to be more harmful to the environment than the problem it is replacing. Therefore we were interested to come across this post at green-blog.org discussing the potential fallacy of the website blackle.com. Blackle claims that because the background on Google’s search page is white, it burns more energy than the alternative that Blackle provides (a google search bar with an all black background).
However, apparently this energy savings only occurs with computers that use certain monitor types (CRT) and not with others (LCD). Since most modern computers use LCDs (the new thin models) instead of CRTs (the big boxy models), this “solution” may actually increase energy usage. Google agrees and weighs in with their own analysis here.
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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Apparently the dramatic increase in oil prices over the past few years has, in addition to spurring massive investment in alternative energy sources, also caused many individuals living in colder climates to switch from gas to wood for warming their homes.
This is an interesting trend because it has often been assumed that the rise in oil prices will cause the market to find cleaner alternatives. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, as seen with this increase in wood burning. Similar to coal power plants that are not governed by carbon regulations, wood burning also fails to accurately price in the externality of air pollution.
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Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
On Friday we had a post alluding to the concept of environmental externalities in explaining why solar energy isn’t yet cost efficient. Interestingly, the country of Ireland has a great example of how to restore balance into the pricing of products that are causing economically unaccounted for damage to the environment. In addressing the waste and environmental damage caused by the use of plastic bags at grocery stores, a few years ago Ireland imposed a 33 cent end-user tax on plastic bags (recently raised to 50 cents). According to the New York Times, the result was a 94% percent decrease in the use of plastic bags! Again, with most things that damage the environment, the true cost of that damage was not being paid for by the consumer (since plastic bags were completely free until the tax). By imposing this fee, the government of Ireland did two things: First, it more accurately priced the cost of plastic bags (by forcing the consumer to pay for the cost of environmental damage resulting from these bags). Second, and probably even more important, it created a collective awareness and social norm that rejects and socially condemns the use of these bags.
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