Paper, Not Plastic

I don't do the grocery shopping in our family, so I'm not sure the lilting query, "Paper or plastic?" is still being raised at the checkout. I do remember years ago researching diligently to see whether paper or plastic was better (or perhaps less bad) for the environment and concluding it was probably sixes.

I was apparently wrong.

In a piece on Salon.com this morning, I learned that plastic bags -- something like a trillion of them and growing -- are killing us.

Here are two key excerpts, though I recommend reading the whole piece.

"The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, ... numbering in the trillions. They're made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags.... It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil."

"Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide -- about 2 percent in the U.S. -- and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries."

Environmentalists recommend you use canvas or cloth bags over and over again and avoid the whole paper-or-plastic question. But if you can't or don't want to do that, paper -- preferably with at least 40% recycled material -- is vastly preferable to plastic.