Are Cloth Bags Really Eco-Friendly?
Created By RISC | 1 year ago
Last modified date : 1 year ago
Plastic waste remains a pressing issue and Thailand has been advocating cloth bags instead of plastic bags for 3 years.
Department stores and convenience stores stopped giving plastic bags on 1 January 2020, as part of a collaboration between the public and private sectors to reduce plastic bag waste. Plastic bags are now only used for warm food. That’s why, whether you bought it or were given it, your home now has a cloth bag to use instead of plastic. You might well have 4-5 cloth bags or even more. And you could well get more in the future.
But are reusable cloth bags really worthwhile?
Using cloth bags has many benefits. They are more reusable than plastic bags. They help reduce ocean plastic. They decompose faster than plastic bags, which can take over 450 years to break down. They leave no residue in the environment. But their production requires a lot of natural resources, including land for growing cotton, as well as water and chemicals, plus resources for harvesting, processing, and manufacturing. We have to reuse cloth bags over 7,000 times to make their production worthwhile.
So if cloth bags are still bad for the environment, what should we use?
The answer is any bag you can reuse over and over. Plastic bags, cloth bags, or even paper bags that we discard are all bad for our environment. Every material has a resource cost. You’re on the right track if you use a cloth bag. Keep using it without getting any new ones. And if you get a plastic bag, reuse it as much as possible. And sort your plastic waste for recycling to reduce pressure on landfills.
Story by Tiptaptim Sunpaechudasil, Senior Sustainable Designer, Sustainable Building Materials, RISC
Reference:
https://www.thesustain.space/bitesize/go-green-%e0%b9%84%e0%b8%9b%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%b1%e0%b8%9a%e0%b8%96%e0%b8%b8%e0%b8%87%e0%b8%9e%e0%b8%a5%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%aa%e0%b8%95%e0%b8%b4%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%8a%e0%b8%b5%e0%b8%a7%e0%b8%a0%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%9e/