Life of a Plastic Bag

With all of today's environmental concerns, many people in your community are uncertain whether the plastic bags they've come to count on for so many routine tasks are a wise environmental choice. There is no need for confusion, however. From manufacture through transport, storage, use and disposal, plastic bags don't just offer reliability and convenience - they make good sense environmentally, too.

Plastic Bags Offer a Variety of Benefits

• Plastic grocery sacks, which can be made strong enough to hold up to 25 pounds of goods, reduce the need for double bagging.
• Handles make them convenient to carry.
• Water resistance makes plastic bags ideal for sports, travel and outdoor uses.

Plastic Bags Conserve Resources

• Paper bags use both renewable and non-renewable resources in their production. In fact, production of plastic grocery sacks uses 20 percent to 40 percent less total energy than paper sacks, and results in 80 percent less waste.¹
• The manufacture of plastic bags requires only a small amount of natural gas and petroleum.
• Thanks to advances in resins, today's plastic bags use 25 percent less material than bags made in 1987, without compromising strength.
• It takes seven trucks to deliver the quantity of paper bags contained in one truckload of plastic bags.

Most bags are made of polyethylene, selected for its durability, strength and cost-effectiveness. Retail packaging (i.e., grocery sacks, consumer trash bags, merchandise bags, household bags and wraps, laundry and garment bags and self-serve and wet packs) accounts for 29 percent of the polyethylene film market.²

Plastic Bags Can Be Reused in Many Ways

Using a product more than once before throwing it away is one important way to conserve resources. More than 80 percent of consumers reuse plastic bags as liners for household wastebaskets, shoe totes and laundry or garment bags. They also use them to carry home wet swimsuits, towels or gym clothes, to hold recyclables or yard wastes for collection, or for a variety of other purposes.

Plastic Bags Are Recyclable

• About half of the nation's supermarkets and many other retailers now recycle plastic bags.
• Plastic bags are recycled into such products as industrial trash-can liners, flower pots, drain pipes and new plastic bags.
• Plastics manufacturers are working to improve technologies for recycling plastic bags.

Plastic bags collected for recycling are shredded, pelletized and made into new products. In fact, in some communities, households use large plastic bags made with recycled content to collect recyclables for municipal pickup.

While consumers are making progress in recycling plastic, business is supporting that effort and working to stay a step ahead. The plastics industry has helped provide the infrastructure and the public awareness needed for successful recycling.

Plastic Bags Have a High Fuel Value

After reducing, reusing and recycling resources, the next best way to manage solid waste is incineration. Waste-to-energy incinerators harness the energy released in combustion and convert it to electricity. Because plastics are made from petroleum derivatives and release high energy levels, plastic bags play a positive role in the process.

• The polyethylene in plastic grocery sacks, when burned, gives off more energy than coal (18,500 vs. 8,500-14,000 Btu per pound).
• In waste-to-energy incineration, plastic bags help mixed solid wastes burn more efficiently. Polyethylene burns cleanly, giving off no toxic fumes; it releases only carbon dioxide and water.

Plastic Bags Save Space, Add Stability in Landfills

Landfills are designed to seal out the sunlight, oxygen and moisture needed for wastes to degrade. Under these conditions, plastic bags have several environmental advantages:

• They take up one-seventh the space of paper bags.
• They are inert and, therefore, contribute to the chemical and physical stability that becomes important when a landfill is closed. Many plastic bags now contain some recycled content, helping to close the recycling loop.

Today's solid-waste managers increasingly rely on source reduction, recycling and incineration to minimize the amount of waste sent to landfills. Plastic bags are appropriate for all these waste-management options.

Plastic Bags: A Positive Environmental Choice

The guidelines for preserving the environment can be condensed into the "3 Rs": reduce, reuse and recycle. Plastic bags help consumers meet those environmental goals. They conserve resources in their manufacture, use and disposal. They are used and reused daily in dozens of ways, and consumers can feel confident that there are environmentally sound ways of disposing of them.

For more information visit the Film and Bag Federation on the web at www.plasticbag.com.

Back to Top

More Outreach and Education:   Workforce Development