Plastic bag sales in England halved in past year
I‘m as much against (single use) plastics as the next guy but what’s the alternative here?<p>Studies have shown multiple times [1], [2] that cotton bags require far more energy and water to produce than almost everything else and need to be reused circa 7.100 times for non organic and twenty-thousand times for organic cotton until they surpass plastic bags.<p>I have some cotton bags and they are all produced as cheap as possible and I’m doubting wether they even can be used thousands of times before they disintegrate or some seams come apart.<p>In fact LDPE bags have the lowest environmental impact of them all. Unbleached paper and bipolymer bags come close after that.<p>The recommendation for end of life is always to reuse them as waste/trash bags by the way, recycling plastic bags has a larger environmental impact. So best to use LDPE bags a few times and then reuse as waste bag seems to be the best option.<p>[1] - <a href="https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/life-cycle-assessment-of-supermarket-carrierbags-a-review-of-the-bags-available-in-2006" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/life-cycle-assess...</a>