26/07/2018
Good Plastics Making Life Better.
Polyethylene and Polypropylene are 'the good plastics'. For safety reasons, they are widely used for drinking water pipes and food packaging. Without lightweight PE and PP bottles, retailer fleets would make 50% more journeys with glass jars, resulting in 50% more fossil fuel consumption and 50% more greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to paper bags (e.g. same number of equivalent uses), PE shopping and grocery bags require 70% less energy and 94% less fresh water. Use of PE bags rather than paper results in an astounding 50% savings in greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent). Finally, a reusable cotton bag weighing 22 times as much as an HDPE grocery bag due to cotton's lower tensile, tear and impact properties, must be used 327 times for it to result in less Global Warming Potential than the HDPE bag, when the latter is reused as a trash bin liner.
In a country perennially ravaged and threatened by floods, science points the way to saving lives, homes and sources of livelihood. Use plastic bags rather than paper bag, and rather than only occasionally using cotton bags. Reduce, reuse and recycle plastics.
