It wasn’t too long ago we were told that choosing plastic over paper at the grocery checkout stand was the environmentally friendly choice.
If you chose paper, it meant that you hated woodland forest creatures and wanted your children to grow up surrounded by scarred, treeless moonscapes instead of lush mountain forests.
Now, if you choose plastic, you’re not only contributing to global warming, but you’re killing off marine life and clogging landfills.
And really, all you want to do is safely get your groceries from your trunk to your kitchen counter without a lot of hassle.
But suddenly the question of paper or plastic is inducing panic attacks. In Denver, a movement is afoot to charge you more at the grocery checkout should you choose either one.
So which option should the modern-day shopper — who’s legitimately concerned about the environment but really just wants to get through his or her day without a splitting headache — choose?
Consider this:
Fourteen million trees are whacked each year to make our paper bags, yet we use 12 million barrels of oil — at a hundred bucks a pop — to make plastic bags. Trees are renewable; our relationship with the Middle East is not.
Advantage: paper.
Making those paper bags, however, creates 70 percent more air pollution — and 50 times more water pollutants — than plastic.
Advantage: plastic.
Until, of course, you consider that plastic bags create four times the amount of solid waste as paper. That’s enough, as MSNBC pointed out, to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times.
It also takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag, as many websites point out. It also takes less energy to recycle plastic than paper — if the low-grade plastic can be recycled.
Advantage: plastic.
However, plastic doesn’t biodegrade, meaning it can linger on the Earth for a thousand years. And each year more than 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. Apparently all that will be left after nuclear war are cockroaches, Cher and plastic sacks.
Advantage: paper.
Until you consider that today’s landfills are designed so nothing biodegrades, according to the Environmental Literacy Council. The waste in landfills is isolated from air and water to prevent groundwater contamination and air pollution, so the trash just sits.
Hmmm. Advantage: trash?
This paper vs. plastic game can’t be won. Both options, frankly, are bad for the environment.
Groups such as BetterBagsColorado, which is lobbying the Denver City Council to require grocers to charge shoppers 10 cents for every bag, paper or plastic, say the only real enviro-friendly answer is reusable cloth bags.
But can a 10-cent bag tax, about $2 a week for most many shoppers, force customers to trade convenience for a cleaner tomorrow?
And why punish consumers for choosing paper or plastic? Those are options provided by the stores, not requested by customers.
As the green movement swells and shoppers are forced to change their habits — either because of mandates or social pressures — the question of paper or plastic soon will seem as quaint as getting off the couch to change the TV channel.
But for now, I’m guessing most of us will choose convenience. Even if it costs two bucks.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
