Plastic Is ‘Greener’ Than Paper, Trade Council Claims

Paper or plastic? The debate over which is more environmentally sound is about to heat up as the paper and plastic industries compete for favor in the checkout line.

Environmentalists have an answer of their own: neither is good.

The plastics industry today will attack the widely held notion that paper grocery bags and other containers are environmentally superior to plastic. An industry group will unveil studies that conclude plastic comes out ahead over the life of both materials.

The studies, sponsored by the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, compare the so-called cradle-to-grave energy costs and environmental impacts of various disposable paper and plastic items. This means studying them from raw materials through manufacture and consumer use to recycling and final disposal.

Besides shopping bags, the studies compare polystyrene foam and cardboard cups and plates, as well as the hinged boxes typically used to package hamburgers. A final study, comparing half-gallon milk containers, will be released in about a month, according to the council.

The research, by Franklin Associates Ltd., a Kansas-based independent research firm, concludes that plastic takes less energy and produces less waste in the overwhelming majority of situations studied.

Plastic grocery bags, for example, produce less waste at every stage of manufacture, use and disposal, the study says. Moreover, the energy required to produce and transport the bags is less for plastic up to the point where at least 60% of each kind of bag is being recycled, according to the study. Paper bags catch up at that point because there are greater energy savings from recycling paper than plastic.

In the opposite camp, the American Paper Institute, an industry group, has looked at the studies and contends that they misrepresent the energy costs to produce each material. Also, say paper industry representatives, such questions as how the materials degrade in the open environment--as litter and potentially harmful objects to wildlife--were not addressed.

Meanwhile, many environmentalists think both sides are wrong, in the long run. Containers shouldn’t be disposable in the first place, they say.

For instance, consumers should avoid both kinds of shopping bags by taking their own string sacks or canvas totes to market, says the Environmental Action Foundation, which concentrates on solid waste and energy issues.

“If we’re talking about plastic versus paper at the grocery store,” says David Goeller of Environmental Action, “we recommend cloth. Shoppers in Europe have been carrying their own reusable sacks to the markets for years.”

“If forced to the absolute choice,” Goeller says, “we’ll come down on the side of paper. There we’re dealing with a renewable resource.”

Paper industry critics make the same point, even about the energy that it takes to produce each material.

Wood wastes such as bark, sawdust and pulp-plant residues--all renewable resources, unlike the oil and natural gas used to produce plastics--provide about 67% of the energy used to make the unbleached kraft paper in paper grocery bags, according to the paper institute. The papermaking and plastic manufacturing stages also use most of the energy in the cradle-to-grave cycle. And so, although it may take more energy to produce paper, the impact on non-renewable energy sources is greater for plastic, and that is of greater harm to the environment, say critics of the study.

“This is more P.R. than science,” said Robert T. McKernan of the paper institute.

“We’re aware of those arguments,” countered Jere Sellers, program manager at Franklin Associates, which is in charge of the studies. “I wouldn’t call it an unfair comparison.”

Sellers pointed out that Franklin researchers have performed such studies for at least two decades, not only for industry--including the paper business--but for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense and the Energy Department.

“The worst thing that we could do for our reputation would be to put out a study that threw objectivity out of the window,” Sellers said, “and we’re not about to do that.”