Plastic Logic

Plus, Rathje's been saying this kind of thing for decades, including in a well known book for general readers. So there is really no excuse for the ignorance.

I was thinking about this just the other day when I saw "Wall-E" for the first time.

"biodegrading paper represents a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Secondly, in a properly run landfill, paper doesn't really biodegrade. In fact, nothing much really does."
How can both of these be a problem? If they biodegrade they don't take up landfill and if they don't degrade then they don't produce greenhouse gases.

Growing trees to make paper bags which we bury and never degrade might be a decent carbon sink.

I never understood why people cared so much about dumps. Given how valuable coastal land is, I'm surprised we don't have a systematic project to create more coastal land though landfill.

Paper products are thicker now precisely because they contain more recycled paper. When paper is recycled the longer fibers which give it strength get broken down. So the greater its "recycled content" the weaker the paper by volume/weight. To make a strong thin bag you must use virgin paper.

Actually, the chief rationale for paper recycling is to make envirohysterics happy. Paper recycling only sometimes saves money and almost never "saves" the environment. Collecting paper for recycling, shipping it (repeatedly), and disposing of bulkier/heavier recycled-paper products burns more fossil fuel and takes up more landfill space than just using virgin paper would.

It would be nice to now the ratio of inches takes up by say 100 plastic bags vs. 100 paper bags. As we all know, every argument is exponentially more convincing when there are numbers in it, no matter how trivial. Good article; good blog post. Dr. Henderson, you are an excellent addition to this great team of bloggers. Don't go anywhere.

i prefer not to use plastic (rips too easily) or paper (because of the landfill issue). i use cloth bags--last much longer & are easier to use.

Thank you, Sohaib. And I agree with your point about numeracy.
Also, I agree with OneEyedMan's point that it can't be the case that both biodegrading and not biodegrading are problems.

Also, I agree with OneEyedMan's point that it can't be the case that both biodegrading and not biodegrading are problems.

The conclusion is that if you value reduced greenhouse gas emission over reduced landfill usage, you should opt for plastic. Moreover, even if you value reduced landfill usage over reduced emissions, using paper might still produce more landfill because paper often fails to decompose in landfills.

"Given how valuable coastal land is, I'm surprised we don't have a systematic project to create more coastal land though landfill."

The Babylon Project? Well, I'd love an Ingram, so sounds good to me.

Interesting, but I'm not sure reducing landfill volume is an important issue.

From John Tierney's, "Recycling is Garbage"
"A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America."

@ OneEyedMan...

Your idea is good, except you forget that most 'leftist environmentalists' (to use Dr. Henderson's phrase), would oppose any development of a 'wetlands' be it costal, estuary, or otherwise... especially if it means a profit of some kind to some individual/company/companies.

Matthew Gunn I agree with your comments ("Recycling is Garbage") and add that as technology improves and or resources prices rise we may be able to profitably mine our land fills. Gathering garbage together in land fills might be the best thing to do with it.

A year or so ago I did a calculation on the amount of petroleum required to make plastic bags. All of the numbers were easily available from Wikipedia. As I recall, if you used one plastic bag grocery bag per day for one year, that would take about the same amount of petroleum required to make one quart of gasoline. So, it behooves you not to make any special trips to pick up your cloth grocery bag, or to drop off the paper ones at the recycling station.

Alas, I seem to have lost my notes! You'll have to trust me on the math for this one :)