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An Exploratory Comparative Study on Eco-Impact of Paper and Plastic Bags

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 Journal of Fiber Bioengineering and Informatics Regular Article

An Exploratory Comparative Study on Eco-Impact of

Paper and Plastic Bags
Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu, Yi Li*, Jun-Yan Hu, Pik-Yin Mok

Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Abstract: Today there are varieties of comments prevailing among people who use Plastic and Paper
bags for their shopping needs. A few people support Plastic bags with their own justifications and
others support Paper bags. This is a hot topic of today and arguments are going up and down to deduce
which one is better in terms of environmental impact, but some people abstain from this issue by
choosing the other option of going with reusable bags. This exploratory study is attempted to infer
the environmental concerns made by these bags. The two common grocery bags of today – Paper &
Plastic bags are compared in this study. Two imperative measures – total amount of energy used by a
bag to get it manufactured and the amount of pollutants emitted during the manufacturing phase of a
bag - are chosen as data for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). To arrive at a clear state of conclusion with
respect to environmental impact made by these two bags, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) study
was accomplished. Evolvement of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study from the data available on this
context is the crux of this study. The Eco-indicator 99, damage oriented method for LCIA in SIMAPRO
7.1 tool is used to assess the environmental impact made by these two grocery bags. The single score
values calculated by the Eco-indicator 99 is considered as a directive to compare the environmental
impact made by these and a detailed explanation of results is also dealt with in this paper. As far as the
Life cycle energy analysis and amount of pollutants produced from these two bags are concerned, a
plastic bag simply scores out a paper bag. The impact assessment results are also in line to support the
plastic bags over paper bags. However, this conclusion has been drawn on the basis of the secondary
data chosen for LCI and the results provided by the software which also has certain hypotheses and
assumptions.

Keywords: plastic bags, paper bags, life cycle impact assessment, SIMAPRO, eco-indicator 99

1. Introduction different web pages on which bag is better amongst

Paper and Plastic ones? Notwithstanding these
There are many types of bags available today to cater references present different sorts of justification for
the shopping needs of people. An endless variety the arguments, a scientific evaluation to quantify
of raw materials and technologies are employed to the environmental impacts is very much needed.
manufacture them. Out of them the most popular This paper serves as an exploratory study on the
ones are Plastic and Paper bags, since many years. quantification of environmental impacts of these bags
Also one should accept that they are the ones which to facilitate the investigation on the piled up issues
are being subjected to a lot of constructive criticisms associated with these bags. This present study sheds
as well. Due to the highly demanding environmental light on the eco-impact made by plastic and paper
needs, many alternatives are found to be superior bags by using Life Cycle Analysis study.
to them in many platforms, especially in terms of
environmental friendliness have come to the market 2. Production Processes of Paper and
now and become familiar among common people.
Even then it is worthwhile to infer the Eco-Impact Plastic Bags
made by them. Numerous perplexing arguments
[1-19] can be seen in many discussions from Plastic bags are made from non-renewable resources,
where the key ingredients are petroleum and natural

* Corresponding author's email: tcliyi@[Link]

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gas. Polyethylene - High Density, Low Density, and one can see many slogans in this perspective in
linear low-density polyethylene [LLDPE] are the supermarkets in most of the countries. Their rate of
raw materials widely used for the manufacture of decomposition is much slower which can even last up
plastic bags [20]. The shopping bags used by super to 1000 years [23] and most of the plastic bags, say
markets would be ideally produced out of LLDPE to up to 96% are being thrown into landfills [24].
get the desired thickness and glossy look. And if one
needs very thin and filmy bags then LDPE would be Switching over the discussion track to Paper bags,
an ideal choice [21]. The oil used for manufacturing they are made out of Pulpwood from trees, which is
plastic bags figures out to 4% of the world’s total oil a renewable source. However, we get paper bags by
production [12, 13]. The production outline of plastic cutting of trees which on the other way blemishes
bags in general is depicted in Figure 1, which shows both plants and animals. It is also produced by energy
the generalised picture of manufacture of plastic created by coal or natural gas. Thus created pulp will
products and plastic shopping bags [22]. People feel be converted into a paper bag by different processes
plastic bags are light and easy to carry. Their shape and machines after consuming tremendous amounts
and structure aid people to have such a feeling about of energy from fossil fuels, electricity, various
them. Also they are found to be cheaper in cost chemicals, etc. [13]. An outline of manufacturing
when compared to paper bags. Also they have the process of paper shopping bags is given in Figure 2.
capability to be reused and recycled. Such recycling And also they are biodegradable and can be recycled
activities can be found in a number of supermarkets to create corrugated cardboards majorly.

Figure2 Process outline for paper shopping bags manufacture.

3. Technology of Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental burdens associated

with a product, process or activity by identifying and
A life-cycle assessment [LCA] is an analytical tool quantifying energy and materials used and wastes
which can help in understanding the environmental released to the environment; to assess the impact
impacts from the state of acquisition of raw materials of those energy and material uses and releases
to final disposal [25]. In accordance to the definition to the environment; and to identify and evaluate
given by The Society of Environmental Toxicology opportunities to effect environmental improvement.
and Chemistry [SETAC], LCA is an iterative process The assessment includes the entire life cycle of the
product, process or activity, encompassing extracting

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and processing raw materials; manufacturing, to land. The next step - Impact assessment [LCIA
transportation and distribution; use, reuse, -Life Cycle Impact Assessment], which corresponds
maintenance, recycling and final disposal [26]. to ISO 14042 [29] deals with the exploration of the
implication of impacts made on the environment
According to ISO 14040 an LCA study essentially derived from the outcome of the inventory analysis.
consists of four interconnected steps/phases [27] [see In other words, in this phase, the results of the
Figure 3]: inventory analysis step are interpreted in terms of
the environmental impacts. Various effects deduced
• Goal and scope definition at this step can be compared to arrive at the overall
• Inventory analysis assessment of the products under investigation. The
• Impact Assessment impact assessment phase - LCIA consists of both
• Interpretation mandatory and optional elements in accordance with
ISO 14042, which is diagrammatically represented in
In the first step Goal and scope definition, Figure 5.
the definition of goal is intended to specify the
application of study, the very purpose of pursuing the In a nutshell, this phase consists of selection
study and also to state to whom the study is targeted and definition of impact categories such as Global
at. The definition of scope aims at prescribing the Warming, Acidification, Eutrophication, Human
breadth, the depth and the complete details of study. Toxicity, Ozone depletion, Photo-oxidant formation,
It is mandatory to define a functional unit, which is Depletion of abiotic resources, Aquatic and terrestrial
an object of the assessment in a life cycle assessment toxicity measures, etc and classifies them by
study and the boundaries of the system under study assigning the results from the Impact Assessment to
with clear specification of data quality requirements. the relevant impact categories. Then characterizing
This step and the following step Inventory analysis by aggregating the inventory results in terms of
are corresponding to ISO 14041 [28]. adequate factors called as, “Characterization factors”
of different types of substances within the impact
The second step – Inventory analysis, [LCI – Life categories; therefore a common unit is defined for
cycle Inventory] focuses on analyzing the different each category [30].
flows of material and energy corresponding to the
production of the product and the environment. And The last but not least step – Interpretation of LCA
the data pertaining to the flows of input and output which is in accordance to ISO 14043 [31], primarily
are collected in this phase [28], as shown in Figure aims at drawing conclusions out of the study and
4. Input flows refer to the various resources like also advising suitable recommendations to chuck out
raw materials, energy or land or any sort of thing major impacts encountered if any. The entire process
connected to the production of the product. Output of Life cycle assessment is iterative [32].
flows mean any sort of emissions to air, water or

Figure 3 Phases of an LCA.

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Figure 5 Mandatory and optional elements of LCIA.

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4. Exploratory Study of LCIA of Plastic emitted during the process of manufacture. Having
considered the carrying-capacity of two carrier bags
and Paper Bags
under investigation, to be conservative on volume
& weight, two plastic bags is compared to one paper
As stated earlier, this study revolves around the Life
bag. Also it should be noted that they also assume
Cycle Impact Assessment of plastic and paper bags.
current recycling rates, hence the functional unit is
The functional unit is 1 unit of paper and 2 units
chosen as 1 unit of paper and 2 units of plastic bags.
of plastic bags. The initial step of this study is the
secondary data for LCI which was obtained from
4.1 Energy Data
the study on life-cycle energy analysis comparison
on plastic and paper bags done by Institute for Life
Energy related data are collected from the elements
Cycle Environmental Assessment; this in turn is
of:
based on the basic study performed on by Franklin
Associates, Ltd. [33]. This same set of secondary data
• Transportation
has been widely used in various studies [1, 19, 21,
• Electricity
34-38].
• Fuel extraction and processing
• Energy within the feedstock
Data pertaining to this study focuses on two
main issues: first and foremost is the total energy
Energy equivalents collected from the above
consumed by a bag to get it manufactured, where total
said elements are all converted into energy units, say
energy represents process and feedstock energies.
kilojoules [kJ].
The second criterion is the quantity of pollutants

Table 1 enumerates the energy data [33]. From 4.2. Emissions Data
the table 1, one can understand that 2 plastic bags
consume less energy than one paper bag does. Almost Under this topic, major emissions such as amount
it accounts to 87% of the amount of energy used by of solid waste produced, atmospheric waste, water-
one paper. The same point of less energy consumption borne wastes are calculated. The following table 2.
of plastic bags compared to paper bags has been gives a glimpse on the amount of pollutants produced
mentioned in some other studies as well [39-42]. by plastic and paper bags [33].

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The above said data also portrays a clear picture eutrophication, land use, minerals and fossil fuels.
on the quantity of emissions by paper and plastic The working principle of Ecoindicator’99 method
bags, out of which one can understand that plastic [49] is explained in the Figure 6 given below.
bags emit less amount of pollutants in different
categories than paper bags. The same sort of The general framework of Ecoindictor’99 lies in
conclusion has been derived by many other studies as modelling the life cycle analysis in three main spheres
well [39-42]. namely Technosphere, Ecosphere and Valuesphere.
The three fields of scientific knowledge and reasoning
4.3. Life Cycle Assessment Analysis & Results has to be necessarily dealt with in LCA methodology
[50], which is termed here, as “spheres”:
Thus the above mentioned data are processed by
using one of the commercial LCA softwares – [1] Technosphere, the description of the life
SIMAPRO 7.1. The Eco-indicator 99, damage cycle, the emissions from processes, the allocation
oriented method for LCIA is employed to assess procedures as far as they are based on causal
the environmental impact. A good number of LCA relations.
studies used this method to assess the LCIA; some
references are [43-48]. The main impact categories [2] Ecosphere, the modelling of changes
to be investigated under this exploratory study are: [damages] that are inflicted on the “environment”.
carcinogens, respiratory organic and inorganic,
climate change, radiation, ozone layer, ecotoxicity, [3] Valuesphere: the modelling of the perceived
acidification/eutrophication, land use, minerals and seriousness of such changes [damages], as well as the
fossil fuels. Single score values are calculated by management of modelling choices that are made in
this method and the results are given below. The Techno- and Ecospheres.
following figures 8-12 illustrate the results of Life
Cycle Impact Assessment made by plastic and paper With the above mentioned three spheres as
bags. foundation, a basic three-stage approach of the Eco-
indicator method has been evolved:
4.4. Comparative Environmental Impacts
• T h e l i f e c y c l e m o d e l i s c o n s t r u c t e d i n
4.4.1. Description of Computational Structure of Technosphere. The result is the inventory table.
Eco-indicator’99 Methodology • Ecosphere modelling is used to link the inventory
table to the three damage categories or “endpoints”.
Eco-indicator 99 [E] v2.06/ EI99 H/A version used • Valuesphere modelling is used to weigh the three
in the analysis characterizes the impacts into the endpoints to a single indicator, and to model the
following impact categories: carcinogens, respiratory value choices in the Ecosphere.
organic, respiratory inorganic, climate change,
radiation, ozone layer, ecotoxicity, acidification/ This three-stage method is represented in the
Figure 7 below[50].

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Figure 7 Core concept of the Eco-indicator 99 methodology.

During the first step i.e., classification and [51]. The corresponding impact categories [52] for
characterisation stage, considerations are given to the above said three conditions and their respective
three major conditions, which are Human Health units can be viewed from the following Table 3.
[HH], Ecosystem Quality [EQ] and Resources [R]

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Table 3 Units of different Impact Categories in Damage Assessment

Damages to HH are expressed in unit of characterisation of impacts into different categories as

“Disability Adjusted Life Years” [DALY]. Damages mentioned earlier. The result of the comparison shows
to EQ are expressed in terms of “Potentially that plastic bags found to be little better in terms
Disappeared Fraction” [PDF] and “Potentially of lesser environmental impact compared to paper
Affected Fraction” [PAF] of species due to an bags. In a closer perspective, impacts of paper bags
environmental impact. The PDF and PAF values characterized to 100% on Carcinogens, Respiratory
are then multiplied by the area size and the time organics, Inorganics, Climate Change, Ecotoxicity,
period necessary for the damage to occur. Damage to Acidification/Eutrophication, land use and around
Resources is often expressed by means of the surplus 49% on Radiation, 47% on Ozone layer depletion,
energy needed for the future mining of resources 29% on minerals and 46% on Fossil fuels. On the
[51]. The detailed explanation of ecoindicator’99 is other hand, the impact of plastic bags characterized
explained elsewhere [53-59]. to 100% on Radiation, Ozone Layer, Minerals and
Fossil Fuels categories and 53% on carcinogens,
4.4.2. Analysis Results 90% on respiratory organics, 63% on Inorganics,
45% on climate change, 52% on eco toxicity, 85% on
Characterisation Values acidification/eutrophication and 75% on land use.

Figure 8 shows the characterization results in the

form of a bar chart. From this figure one can see the

Figure 8 Characterisation results.

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Damage Assessment Results contribution to the impact made by Plastic bags. As

stated above in characterization step, the maximum
Figure 9 shows the damage assessment results contribution of damage is made by paper bags on
of this comparative study. Comparing the life cycle Carcinogens, Respiratory organics, Inorganics,
stages of the paper and plastic bags, it is remarkable Climate Change, Ecotoxicity, Acidification/
that Carcinogens, Respiratory organics, Inorganics, Eutrophication and land use categories and plastic
Climate Change, Ecotoxicity, Acidification/ bags contribute to the damage on Radiation,
Eutrophication and land use have the greatest Ozone Layer Depletion, Minerals and Fossil Fuels
contribution to the overall impact by the paper bags, categories. The percentage of damage made by each
but these impacts are assigned to comparatively lesser bag on other categories can be viewed from Figure 9.

Figure 9 Damage assessment results.

Normalisation & Weighing Assessment Results showing the results of weighing in value sphere
modelling, as explained earlier. Both of the principles
Figure 10 and 11 show the normalisation & of normalisation and weighing can be seen from the
weighing results of this comparative study on paper Figure 6-7. A detailed explanation can be found from
and plastic bags. One can visualize the normalized the references [53-59].
results of impact categories from Figure 10 and 11

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Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu et al.

Figure 10 Normalisation results.

Figure 11 Weighing results.

4.4.3. Interpretation of Results Carcinogens, Respiratory organics, Inorganics and

Climate Change is attributed to the fact that these
Carcinogens, Respiratory Organics and Inorganics impact categories are significantly depend upon the
and Climate Change amount of energy consumed [60]. Since the amount
of energy consumed by paper bags is very much
The maximum amount of contribution made higher compared to plastic bags, these factors turned
by paper bags on the impact categories such as to be much higher for paper bags.

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Radiation & Ozone Layer Depletion Single Score Values

Radiation is a kind of damage resulting from Deduction of Life cycle analysis modelling to
radioactive radiation. A good example of an element single score values enable us to bring out the results
which can cause radiation is carbon, which is to a fully aggregated score/value, out of which one
employed much during the production of plastic bags can understand the scores earned by each product
than paper bags. Ozone layer impact, which is mainly under comparison. More the points earned by a
due to increased UV radiation as a result of emission product, more will be the environmental impact,
of ozone depleting substances to air, is higher for and vice versa. Figure 12 portrays the single score
plastic bags than paper bags. values of paper and plastic bags, which gives a lucid
explanation of noticeable impact of paper bags on
Ecotoxicity climate change, respiratory inorganics and maximum
impact of plastic bags on damage to fossil fuels. All
Ecotoxicity, which is primarily as a result of emission of the other contributing factors of both bags can be
of eco toxic substances to air, water and soil is much noticed from the single score values and the detailed
higher for paper bags [61]. explanation pertaining to them were discussed above.

Acidification/Eutrophication The emphasis on interpretation phase of this

analysis is not on concluding which one is much
Also the acidification/ Eutrophication potential which better. Actually the conclusion needs to be drawn on
results from the emissions of acidifying substances how to reduce the environmental impacts by both of
to air and water, and Eutrophication of water [61]. them. One of the possible ways to decipher this is by
The reasons for the same can be understood very well means of finding ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle
from the inventory data. both of them [62-65]. In fact, many retail stores
have started utilizing this philosophy of reducing,
Land use recycling and reusing the grocery bags. Building up
public awareness and motivation to reduce, reuse and
This damage on land use could be due to either recycle both of the bags will definitely help to resolve
occupation of land or conversion of land to some the environmental problems to a greater magnitude.
thing else. Although this category of damage is
applicable to plastic bags, it is much higher for plastic Also the authors would like to point out that the
bags and it is obvious for paper bags, since they are Life cycle Impact must consider the impacts made
obtained from trees which damage land use much. by the raw materials say, wood for instance for paper
bags in terms of oxygen consumption, nutrient cycles,
Minerals & Fossil Fuels etc. and also include consideration of sustainable
measures.
All Impact categories except radiation, ozone layer,
minerals, and land use favour plastic bags. This can 5. Conclusion
be explained by the fact that the plastic bags use more
amounts of fossil raw materials and energy. In this research paper, an exploratory study was
performed to analyse the life cycle impact assessment
They consume more amounts of crude oil and natural study of paper and plastic bags by using a secondary
gas than paper bags. This is also correlating with data for LCI. According to the LCI data and the
the findings of a report on Socio-economic Impact software used for this study, which also has certain
Assessment of the Proposed Plastic Bag Regulations hypothesis and assumptions, plastic bags are found
b y B e n t l e y We s t M a n a g e m e n t C o n s u l t a n t s , to be little better in terms of environmental impacts
Johannesburg, South Africa [35]. compared to paper bags. However this stage of
conclusion solely depends upon the secondary data
and the LCA software employed for the study.

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Figure 12 Single score value results.

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320 JFBI Vol.1 No. 4 2009 doi:10.3993/jfbi03200909

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