Skaidra Smith-Heisters, author of “Paper Grocery Bags Require More Energy Than Plastic Bags,” debunks the popular myth that plastic bags are less environment friendly than paper bags.
When the cashier rings up a purchase and bags it in a paper bag, the consumer doesn’t see that it took at least a gallon of water to produce that bag (more than 20 times the amount used to make a plastic bag), that it weighed 10 times more on the delivery truck and took up seven times as much space as a plastic bag in transit to the store, and will ultimately result in between tens and hundreds of times more greenhouse gas emissions than a plastic bag.
Whole Foods has jumped on the bandwagon and decided to no longer offer plastic bags to customers.
