Why plastic bags may be better for the environment than paper or cotton

Plastic bags were invented to save the planet, the son of the Swedish engineer who first came up with the idea has claimed - and his original vision may not have been wide of the mark.

First created in 1959 by Sten Gustaf Thulin, plastic carrier bags were developed as an alternative to paper bags, which were considered bad for the environment because they resulted in huge deforestation. The new bags were also significantly stronger than the paper ones they replaced, which meant they could be used over and over again.

“To my dad, the idea that people would simply throw these away would be bizarre,” Raoul Thulin told the BBC.

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“He always carried [a plastic bag] in his pocket folded up. You know what we’re all being encouraged to do today, which is to take your bags back to the shop, he was doing back in the 1970s and 80s, just naturally, because, well, why wouldn’t you?”

By the end of the 1980s they had replaced paper bags in most parts of the world and today “our consumption of this polluting material is one of the biggest threats facing the world’s seas, with marine plastic set to outweigh fish by 2050” says The Independent.

The UN estimates plastic bags are produced at a rate of one trillion a year. The vast majority end up as litter or in landfill, where they take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

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Some countries, including the UK, now charge shoppers for plastic bags while others have banned them altogether.

“Plastic bags seem to be one of the most hated things on the planet,” says BBC Environment Reporter Laura Foster, “but when it comes to thing like climate change, paper and cotton bags are actually much worse for the planet.”

According to the UK Environment Agency, this is because paper carrier bags use more energy, a lot of water to produce and are heavier, thereby increasing the environmental impact of transporting them to the shops. Cotton, meanwhile, uses even more water and is an intensive crop to produce.

Plastic bags, by contrast, are efficient to make and need very little oil and energy to produce.

“To be as environmentally friendly as a single-use plastic bag that’s getting recycled,” says Foster, “a paper bag needs to be used at least three times, while cotton bags need to be used at least 131 times.”