“There are not many takers for paper bags in the City Beautiful as people are finding it hard to give up the habit of easy-to-carry polythene bags despite the newly enforced ban on their use by the administration.”

“As promised, a group of plastic retailers and manufacturers has sued Manhattan Beach for its recent ban on plastic bags. The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition has asked a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to toss out the prohibition on grounds that the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act by not fully analyzing the environmental effects of such a ban, according to papers filed recently.”

“The plastics industry is also fond of trotting out so-called scientific or “life cycle” studies, PPEC says, many of them commissioned by themselves, and others that have little relevance to Canada and Canadian circumstances. “There is no, repeat no, peer-reviewed life cycle analysis of paper and plastic grocery bags used in Canada that meets ISO standards. In fact, we would welcome a credible analysis that recognizes the environmental impact of manufacturing polymers from oil and natural gas and shipping plastic resin and/or bags all the way from coal-dependent China. That would be interesting.”

“One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8300 barrels of oil for extraction of the raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30 percent is oil and 23 percent is natural gas actually used in the bag-the rest is fuel used along the way. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery bags use five times that much total energy. A paper grocery bag isn’t just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy inputs equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional inputs from other energy sources including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste.”

“It takes 91 percent less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound o fpaper. It takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag. Energy to produce the bags (in British thermal units): Safeway plastic bags: 594 BTU; Safeway paper bags: 2511 BTU.”