Plastic Facts
Plastic is better than paper
Intuitively, you might feel that paper is more environmentally-friendly than plastic – after all it is made from trees. But it doesn’t grow on trees, so the trees have to be destroyed to make the paper. In fact it takes 24 trees to make just one ton of paper. It also takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag than to make a plastic bag. Whole forests are cut down to make paper – forests that could be helping the environment by absorbing greenhouse gases. The majority of paper bags are made by heating wood chips under pressure at high temperatures in a chemical solution. The chemicals used in paper production are toxic and contribute to air pollution, including acid rain. They also pollute waterways, and the toxicity of the chemicals is long term and settles in sediments, where it can work its way into the food chain. In fact paper bags produce 70% more air-pollutants and 50% more water-pollutants than plastic bags.