Paper or plastic? paper kills trees, plastic kills sea turtles, but which do you prefer?

Additional Details

5 months ago

In response to harbaugh... I don%26#039;t actually dump bags in the ocean! I just meant in general.

Best Answer

The most environmentally friendly is to bring your own reusable bag (i.e. canvas bag).

If you can%26#039;t or won%26#039;t, then it depends.

Paper bags require more energy to produce and trees to be cut down, but are easily recyclable.

Plastic bags require less energy to produce, but are not recyclable. They are reusable for other applications, but only if your area has a specific plastic grocery bag recycling program (every retail store in California is now required by law to have one, for example).

So from most to least environmentally friendly:

1) Bring canvas bag(s)
2) Plastic if there%26#039;s a specific recycling program
3) Paper
4) Plastic if there%26#039;s no recycling program

Asker's Rating:

Wow! Thank you so much to everyone who answered this, I personally used plastic, but I am getting some eco-friendly bags the next time I go to the grocery store! Save trees and turtles!

Other Answers (25)

• When asked, I say %26quot;BOTH%26quot; We need to speed up global warming
• plastic because you can use it for other things,you can also recycle it.paper rips and breaks.
• Paper - decays faster than plastic and is manufactured from renewable sources (can also be recycled easily). So paper is more eco-friendly than plastic. Plastic wastes stay in the environment for long, causing long term pollution and moreover they are made from non-renewable petroleum derived chemicals.
• Plastic all the way, and mine does not kill sea turtles.
• Paper! trees are a renewable resource! plastic bags fill the landfills. Paper bags are recyclable.
• Paper, it will take to long for plastic to desolve.
• Plastic And stop littering in the sea
• Neither. Reusable bags made out of recycled materials. I like trees and sea turtles.
• It is so funny to watch the schmucks telling you people what bags to use to save the environment. And people keep on listening to the clap trap and believing the sky is falling.
  
  When I was a kid 20 years ago, they made all the grocery stores stop using paper bags because we are cutting down all the trees. They said plastic was a much better option. Now we%26#039;re supposed to stop using plastic because somebody keeps on throwing their plastic bags in the ocean and that is single handedly responsible for killing the whales or polar bears or something.
  
  They also chenged their mind 20 years ago from the idea that we were about to go into another ice age. I remember the hysteria about the coming ice age; it was real. Then one day, they said the Ozone layer had a hole in it that was causing global warming. So we had to stop using hair spray and freon. We had to put catalytic converters on our cars to convert the Carbon Monoxide into harmless Carbon Dioxide so as not to kill the ozone layer.
  
  Now we hear nothing of the ozone layer any more. We are going to overheat ourselves. And the harmless Carbon Dioxide that we produce instead of the Carbon Monoxide is causing Global Warming.
  
  Daoesn%26#039;t anyone else see that the environmental %26quot;experts%26quot; are just using you? They have no real knowlege of what if anything we are doing to the environment and the people just go along like good little sheep and give up all their rights and control over their lives to useless beaurocrats in the name of saving the planet.
• Paper. =)
  It%26#039;s easier to break down, but plastic, on the other hand, takes many many years to finally break down.
  
  I do wish that trees wouldn%26#039;t be cut down so fast, though... =)