Paper Vs. Plastic Packaging: Two Sides Responds To Opinion In TWT BY KATHI ROWZIE The Washington Times recently featured an opinion piece by an advocate for the plastics industry that included mul- tiple environmental claims about paper-based packaging. Two Sides North America submitted the following letter to the editors in response. Why is it that whenever someone wants to extoll the sustainability benefits of plastic packaging products, they
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feel compelled to claim that plas- tics have “a lower environmental impact” than paper-based packag- ing (America succumbs to plastic paranoia, September 26) instead of simply making a fact-based envi- ronmental case? Could it be because paper prod- ucts are the gold standard for circu-
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Kathi Rowzie
larity and true sustainability? In this case, the author makes gratuitous claims that plastic packaging “helps the plan- et” and “saves tens of millions of trees every year,” citing “real scientists” from Sweden and Denmark to back up his claims of plastic’s green superiority. In doing so, he invites comparisons that, of necessity, must also catalog the en- vironmental consequences of plastic packaging, from the extraction of finite resources and energy use to the fate of final products. To start with, the many different resins used to make plastics are derived from non-renewable fossil fuels, namely natural gas, feedstocks derived from natural gas processing, and feedstocks derived from crude oil refining (U.S. Energy Information Administration). And single-use plastics also are incredibly energy-intensive to produce. In fact, plastic production accounts for more than 3 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, using roughly the same amount of oil as the global aviation industry, which in turn generates significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (U.S. Department of Energy). And while Americans toss millions of tons of plastic packaging into their recycling bins, not much of it actually gets recycled. A recycling PR campaign recently launched by the plastics industry says that 6 billion pounds (3 mil- lion tons) of plastic get recycled each year, but that’s only about 9% of the total plastic produced annually in the U.S. according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are just too many different types of plastic, each with different recycling requirements, so they can’t be combined and recycled together. Building out the infrastructure to effectively collect, sort and recycle them poses extremely difficult logistical and economic challenges – challenges that are not likely to be met any time soon, if ever. Given the finite resources and
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October 16, 2023
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