Friday, April 1, 2011
Good morning,
Is plastic is bad for us? Hardly. Misusing plastic is bad
for us. Improperly disposing of plastic is bad for us.
Dumping ton after ton of plastic garbage in the ocean until
there is a literal island of it floating in the middle of
the Pacific is bad. But plastic as a material is an in-
valuable product.
Please scroll down for more.
Thanks for reading,
Your Living Green editor
Email the Editor
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Replacing the plastic packaging that is in use today,
according to one European study, would use four times as
much material from other sources, like paper or aluminum.
The key reason why: Plastic is lightweight. Your typical
plastic quart milk jug, according to studies, is about
90 percent lighter than its equivalent glass container
and about 30 percent lighter than a paper carton. Less
packaging means less waste and less energy spent on
transport.
A 2007 analysis looked closely at the environmental impact
of half-gallon milk jugs, and again plastic fared well.
The typical high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, jug was
lighter than other alternatives, required less energy
to produce, and generated in its life cycle (including
shipping) less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of
glass and 25 percent less than paper milk cartons. The
study confirmed that plastic's major benefit is the fact
that it's lightweight.
There are a number of studies that have showed that even
though plastics are made from petroleum, they use less
petrol-chemical energy than glass!
There are these benefits, the plastics industry points out,
and then there's the obvious one: Plastics are recyclable,
able in most cases to be used over and over again. The
problem is, Americans, even as global warming becomes more
and more accepted, don't take recycling seriously. In 2006,
Americans consumed more than 29 million tons of plastic,
but recycled just 2 million tons of it, a paltry 7 percent.