Environmental news, policy and analysis.
By now it is common knowledge that plastic bags have a substantial environmental impact. However, according to this article, an 11th grade student in Ottawa named Daniel Burd, may have changed this fact. Apparently, Burd, through work on his science project, discovered that plastic bags can actually be at least partially biodegraded in a matter of months, when exposed to bacteria under the right conditions.
The Record newspaper, based out of Ontario, describes Burd’s efforts as follows:
First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.
After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.
Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.
Additionally, under a second iteration of his experiment, Burd was able to decrease the weight of the plastic by 32%. According to the article, Burd’s discovery does have the potential to be applied in the real world. And to boot, Burd took home $30,000 in prizes and scholarship awards from the science fair.
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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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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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One of our readers tipped us to this story discussing Santa Monica’s proposed plans to ban the use of all plastic carry-out bags at stores and restaurants and to force retailers to charge a fee for all paper bags.
According to the LA Times article, Californians use approximately 19 billion plastic carry-out bags each year, 6 billion of which are used in LA. Many of these bags end up clogging storm drains or polluting the ocean. Additionally, the production and distribution of these bags requires a substantial amount of energy.
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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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