Hacker News Reader

Comment by positr0n | Hacker News Reader

Cotton bags must be used 7100 times to be less environmentally impactful than single use thin plastic bags. Organic cotton bags 20,000 times.

Source: https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

(First time I've posted hoping I'm wrong and get down voted and yelled at for spreading FUD, haha. But I've seen this figure a lot)

View on HN

I think that is possible. My mother has had the same cotton canvas grocery bags for ~40 years. They are faded from washing, but are still strong, and she still uses them.

The other advantage is that cotton bags do not shed as many microplastics (the thread is almost always synthetic).

Many of the "re-usable" woven plastic bags I've acquired in recent years are of extremely poor quality. I have had to re-stitch many of them, and some had to be discarded after a very short service life.

I agree, certainly possible if you are diligent.

Most people are not though, for various reasons, most commonly not caring enough. Plastic bag legislatures should keep that in mind if they want to do more than pass a feel good law.

I responded to a sibling comment, but basically I think that study sort of misses the point. The reason to move away from plastic bags is due to plastic waste and microplastics, and the study doesn't touch on that really at all. Their analysis is based on stuff like ozone depletion, eutrophication, resource depletion, and other things that just aren't really meaningfully impacted by shopping bag material choice.

I don't think it's FUD exactly, I think it's just a bit of a weird analysis that focuses on the wrong things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com