I'd venture the plastic garbage bags we use to bag our garbage cost the city of Minneapolis little-to-nothing to process. The garbage trucks dump most of the trash directly in the landfill, it's all tilled and leveled by heavy equipment, and buried. Some garbage is sorted for recycle/combustion in the trash burner downtown, so there may be some minor source-separation costs there, but the plastic isn't the real concern there. I'd guess the 17 cent fee being discussed in California is a bureaucratic fee intended to approximate the internal and external cost of energy in the plastic along with the dirty air associated with the entire energy/plastic production process. That kind of fee per bag is ridiculous in terms of covering city processing costs.
I think the use of plastic bags for storing our wastes is a straight forward solution to the problem. Our trash/garbage is probably held together better in plastic bags than in paper bags, resulting in less litter and smaller rodent populations. The weather doesn't affect plastic like it would paper, and foul smells are contained inside the plastic bags more so than in paper bags. I'd guess that's why the city requires us to put our garbage in plastic bags-- consistently neater and more sound from an environmental health perspective. That's one consideration. A second consideration revolves around the use of paper or plastic in a more holistic sense-- from an energy, natural resources and environmental perspective. Paper is made from wood, a renewable resource (similar arguments would follow for cotton/burlap/hemp bags). I'm not sure off hand, about the energy required to plant and harvest the tree and produce the paper bag, and the influence of recycling on the whole process. But the trees are a renewable resource and can be harvested in a sustainable manner. Plastic is made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. Petroleum is produced in a non-sustainable fashion. On a net-energy basis, I'd guess that the extraction/ gathering/transport/refining/storage/transport/distribution of petroleum products, combined with the energy-intensive chemical processes involved to produce the plastic, then the bags, are more energy-intensive than the processes involved with planting trees and converting trees to paper and bags. Using recycled plastic saves energy. Paper is also much more easily degradable than plastic in either an aerobic or an anaerobic environment. However, most plastic garbage bags get fairly well shredded by earth moving equipment in the landfill, which further facilitates the bio-chemical degradation of the 1-3 mil plastic. The anaerobic degradation in a landfill is accomplished by anaerobic bacteria and some of the main products of that degradation are methane gas and hydrogen sulfide-- thus the landfill my stink like raw eggs and it might even catch fire and burn underground for extended periods due to the methane. Current landfill design tends to minimize fire dangers, and many landfills are actually plumbed to collect the methane gas which may be used to heat water or run a motor/generator. All this, and we haven't even talked about alternate fuels for the garbage trucks, using union/non-union labor, and doing business with local vs. national companies. And did they ever figure out if trash from one side of town smelled worse than trash from the other side of town, and how that impacted packaging requirements? No wonder that garbage hauling contract was so tough to negotiate a while back! What ever happened to our own municipal Trash Lady? Michael Hohmann Linden Hills > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 5:07 PM > To: David Strand > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Mpls] What do Plastic Bags Cost Minneapolis in DisposalCosts? > > > >>>>> "DS" == David Strand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > DS> I'm curious if 17 cents would be similiar to the > DS> expense to Minneapolis. Can our resident waste > DS> specialist on the list find out this information for > DS> us? > > DS> I've heard the argument that plastic bags take less > DS> energy to manufacture than paper ones but paper ones > DS> biodegrade faster and are less difficult to dispose. > DS> Given these competing ideas is one really > DS> environmentally prefereable to the other in all > DS> situations? > > DS> David Strand > DS> Loring Park > > DS> Fun fact to know and tell: > DS> San Francisco is deciding if stores should charge > DS> customers $.17 for each plastic bag. The city has > DS> calculated that $.17 is what it costs them to process > DS> the bag. It is hoped that this will encourage > DS> primarily cloth bags, sugar based compostable > DS> *plastic* replacement bags, or paper. > > I didn't get around to answering this before. I would also like to > hear an answer. My understanding is that > > 1. the city REQUIRES me to use plastic bags for garbage. So I'm not > sure why I'd want to get less plastic bags from supermarkets. > It'd just mean I'd buy more to turn into landfill! [actually, > right now, I take paper bags, because the city requires me to use > paper for recycling, but the point stands.] > > 2. If we have monster landfills, does ANYTHING biodegrade in them? I > thought that big landfills, because they are anaerobic and under > high pressure (from the weight of accumulated garbage), don't > allow anything to decompose. I'd be delighted to be wrong about > this! > > Thanks, > Robert > > -- > > Robert P. Goldman > ECCO > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > REMINDERS: > 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager > at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. > 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. > > For state and national discussions see: > http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html > For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract > ________________________________ > > Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn > E-Democracy > Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
