Does Your “eco-friendly” paper bag actually sustainably produced? The math proves it. The opinions expressed by contributors to Entrepreneur are theirs. Key Takeaways:
- Although paper has been the preferred “sustainable” packaging for over a decade, the problem of global waste is still not solved. This reframe is a game changer for entrepreneurs who are making packaging choices. It isn’t about finding something a little less hazardous. The opportunity is to design materials and systems that make disposability unnecessary.
Few people read research about waste management in their free time. It’s what I do.
The core of my work is what happens to materials at the end. Imagine the shock that I experienced when I discovered a newspaper can be buried and be legible 40 years after it was thrown away.
William Rathje is an archaeologist from the University of Arizona, who has spent years doing what no one else wants to do. He removed garbage.
Between 1987 and 2000, his Tucson Garbage Project dug up 10+ American landfills. He removed layer upon layer of waste. The team found 2,425 newspapers, including some that were still legible from the 1950s. Paper was not a minor discovery. The single biggest category of waste in each landfill was paper.
This fact stuck with me. When India bans single-use items identified in plastic bags in July 2022, and increases the thickness of carrier bags to 120 microns in December of that same year, then paper bag flooded all retail counters and ecommerce shipments in India. Like most people I thought this was progress. Paper is natural. Paper is recyclable. Paper is recyclable.
Right? I was shocked to find out that something strange had happened.
Then I looked up the figures. Global packaging is worth over $1.2 trillion. Paper packaging alone has a value of over $370 billion. The bioplastics industry, in which I am employed, represents about 1% of all packaging materials used worldwide.
Although paper has been the preferred “sustainable” packaging material for a decade, the problem of global packaging waste is still not solved. Oceans are full. The landfills are full.
Decisions made today will leave your grandchildren with dirtier air, water and soil.
I became curious. Why has paper packaging not been adopted as a responsible option for so long? Does paper really last as long as we’ve been led to believe, or are there other factors at play? The results I got were unsettling.
It is my belief that every packaging decision maker should see the data that I saw.
In order to determine whether paper is environmentally sustainable, it’s important to consider the entire production process, and not only the final product on the shelf.
Before it gets to your hand, a paper bag goes through many stages: forestry pulping chemical processing bleaching drying and conversion. Every stage has an associated environmental cost. I’ll walk you through some of the major costs.
- Let’s start with energy.
A single paper bag uses roughly four times as much energy to manufacture than a plastic bag of similar size. Next, water. To put this in context, US pulp and paper mills consume an average of 17,500 gallons per ton produced of paper. India’s Central Pollution Control Board reports that mills in India using wood consume between 40 and 60 kilograms of water per ton. According to a widely quoted industry comparison, plastic bags and paper bags each use about 17 times as much water. Next, chemicals.
Sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide, and sodium hydroxide are used to digest wood in the kraft pulping method, which is responsible for most paper bags produced around the globe. Even the modern methods of bleaching that do not use elemental chloride still release dioxins, organic halides and other pollutants into waterways.
In a peer-reviewed paper mill study in India, effluent had chemical oxygen demands of as high as 19,100 milligrams/liter. This is well over the permissible limit. Every manufacturing process comes with environmental costs. This isn’t the issue. What matters is if the upfront costs of a project are worth it in terms of what comes next.
The paper is advertised as being reusable and degradable. These claims were supposed to justify a heavier footprint in production. The numbers that I discovered next, however, made it very difficult to justify this trade-off.
The 43-reuse problem: What lifecycle research says about paper versus plastic
Two government-commissioned lifecycle assessments (LCAs), considered the gold standard in environmental accounting, have quantified exactly how paper bags compare to plastic bags across their entire existence.
- In a 2011 United Kingdom Environment Agency study, supermarket bags were tested across 10 categories of environmental impact. In nine out of 10 categories, a high-density plastic HDPE bag had the least environmental impact.
To match the climate impact of a plastic bag, a paper bag had to be re-used at least three time.
It sounds doable. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2018 study was a shock. Researchers at Technical University of Denmark conducted the study and it was published under Environmental Project No.
This LCA was conducted in 1985 and measured the bags against 16 environmental indicators including acidification. water usage, ozone destruction, ecotoxicity, etc.
The researchers found that a paper bag without bleaching must be used 43 times in order to equal a plastic bag made of low density polyethylene (LDPE).
- In a 2011 United Kingdom Environment Agency study, supermarket bags were tested across 10 categories of environmental impact. In nine out of 10 categories, a high-density plastic HDPE bag had the least environmental impact.
Forty-three times. Ask yourself now honestly. How many times did you reuse a paper bag before?
When they get wet, the bags lose their structural integrity. The material will tear with moderate pressure. The majority are thrown away after a single use. This is the difference between what we say and the facts about paper sustainability. This isn’t an isolated case. Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Cambridge, as well as KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden examined 16 applications of plastic products that covered approximately 90% of total global volume.
Plastic had lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) over its lifecycle in 15 out of 16 applications. This included paper.
If the footprint of production is larger and the math for reuse does not work, how about the story at the end?
Does paper redeem itself at this point? This is not the case.
Paper bags do not decompose as most people believe.
Rathje’s landfill excavations showed otherwise. The reason for this isn’t a quirk in paper chemistry. Modern landfills work in a certain way.
Anaerobic landfills have been engineered for sanitary landfills. The landfills are kept sealed, dry and compacted.
Paper does not compost when there is no air. The paper just sits. It doesn’t just disappear when the methane breaks down under these oxygen-starved circumstances. Methane is produced, which has a warming effect 28 times greater than carbon dioxide over 100 years.
It is important to understand the scale. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that landfills for municipal solid wastes (MSWs) were responsible for 14,4% of all methane produced in the U.S. in 2022. This is the same amount of emissions as 24 million cars driven for an entire year.
It is bad to have a plastic bag in a landfill that sits inert.
A paper bag that is actively producing methane within the same landfill would be even worse.
The paper that works and the reasons why it is still not a good solution.
Let’s be honest, because there are other sides to this story.
- In open and aerobic environments, paper biodegrades faster than plastic. Plastic would last for hundreds of years. Paper is less damaging to the ocean in coastal areas where there are high levels of waste pollution. India’s industry uses recycled fibres to make up roughly 70-75% of the raw materials it uses. This reduces both its virgin wood footprint and water footprint. The point of this isn’t that paper is bad.
It is important to note that switching from one material of single use to another is not the solution. This is just a movement in the wrong direction, disguised as progress. It’s not about paper or plastic. Why do we design packaging for one-time use?
A meta-analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) of its own lifecycle assessment reached the conclusion: the most effective solution is reuse and not substitution of materials.
This reframe is a game changer for entrepreneurs who are building packaging, supply chains, or products.
It’s not about finding something that is slightly less hazardous. This is not about finding a slightly less harmful disposable. It’s designing materials and system that make disposability unnecessary.
- Materials made from agricultural wastes that can be composted
- Packaging that is closed-loop after usage
- Product designed for multiple cycles instead of just one.
Market is ready. The consumer wants sustainability. They deserve to have solutions that are based on lifecycle data, and not just marketing copy. The next time you are handed a brown paper bag with the comment “At least, it’s not plastic,” ask yourself a more challenging question.
It’s not “what it is made from” but rather “how many uses will it get?” That question is what separates the sustainability theater and actual progress. For entrepreneurs, this is the place where opportunity begins.
- Let’s start with energy.
