Paper or plastic bags – which should you choose, in terms of their total impact on the environment?
Morrisons are trialling the use of paper bags instead of plastic bags, which seems like a good idea, provided the overall impact isn’t increased – the trade-off between the environmental (e.g. energy) cost of producing the paper bags versus the plastic waste from the existing ones seems to have been addressed to some extent.
Previous environmental concerns about this plan focussed on energy, although on closer inspection, the Environment Agency source material for these concerns wasn’t exactly recent.