PAPER BAGS ARE NOT GOOD SUBSTITUTES FOR PLASTIC

yesterday evening, (October first) I witnessed a woman stepping out of a car parked on a busy roadside in Islamabad. She suddenly jumped onto the road, seemingly oblivious to moving vehicles and hastily picked something up from the road. The tyres of a moving vehicle screeched right behind her but fortunately, the driver was able to steer clear of the woman and continue on the one way road.

I later found that one of the lady’s paper bags carrying tomatoes had burst open. Tomatoes fell on the road and she tried to pick them fast before they were crushed by a car.

I was stunned and couldn’t help telling the lady that she risked her life to save her tomatoes. She said when tomatoes suddenly fell through the paper bag, all she could think was carrying grocery home in time for dinner as her family was hungry. In hindsight, she realized how dangerous her action was for her life.

Had the lady been run over by a fast moving vehicle, we would have witnessed first human death caused by ban on plastic in Islamabad.

Paper bags are not a good substitute for plastic bags in terms of utility. They are not good for environment either because the manufacturing of paper bags is more resource intensive than plastic bags, requires four times more energy, generates seventy percent more air pollution and fifty times more water pollution than plastic. On top of that, paper bags generate many more tonnage of sold waste for municipalities to manage and paper bag landfills generate greater number of environmental contaminants such as bisphenol A, phthalates, phenols, mineral oils, polychlorinated biphenyls, and toxic metals. Some of these chemicals are in plastics as well.

Full reading at https://pldmsite.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/plastic-substitute-and-economic-benefit

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