Paper is no better for the environment – plastics industry official

Contrary to popular belief, paper is no friendlier to the environment than plastic, according to Crispian Lao, president and spokesperson of the Philippine Plastics Industry Association.   “One ton of paper requires the cutting of 17 trees; none is cut for plastic. One supermarket paper bag uses one gallon of clean water, which is all that is needed to make 116 plastic bags. Paper uses as much as five times more energy than a comparable plastic production,” Lao explained in a March 8 statement.   The statement criticized the ban on plastics, saying it has raised bigger environmental issues and negatively affected the labor sector.   "[The plastics ban] has severely affected the industry," Lao told GMA News Online in a telephone interview Friday.   "We're not too much concerned with income, but employment... Twenty to forty percent of the sector is affected, and we are trying to keep them employed on a rotation basis," he said.   The statement also claimed that plastic has been “demonized,” giving people the idea that paper is better for the environment.   “It is not. This is the reason developed countries are taking a balanced approach. People are given a choice between plastic and paper because both are needed, and have their pros and cons,” Lao said.   He claimed that a ban on plastic is not the solution to the country’s flood problem, saying “… floods during typhoons Ondoy, Pedring, and Sendong were caused not by plastic but by global warming, which has generated more violent typhoons and unusually heavy rainfall.”   “All this misimpression started with simple floods, and it was very convenient to blame plastic because it was the most visible. But… we have poor drainage systems. And the plastic is there because we refuse to segregate. We must segregate and recycle. The solution is that simple,” he added.   Lao also highlighted the advantages of using plastic products over paper, saying that aside from being able to carry a heavier load, plastic bags can also carry both dry and wet contents.   “All we need to do is to be responsible users and disposers of plastic. To ban it is to deny ourselves, unnecessarily, a ready convenience in favor of paper that causes new problems for us,” he said.   However, Greenpeace campaigner Francis Dela Cruz said in a separate interview Friday with GMA News Online that it is important to consider a “life cycle analysis” when measuring the environmental impacts of plastic and paper.   “If it’s just plastics manufacturing, they have a point,” Dela Cruz admitted.   “Pero saan nagpupunta ang plastic pagkatapos gamitin? If it’s not recycled or downcycled, it pollutes the ground. Paper degrades, the earth can take it back, it’s organic… ‘Yung plastic, nabaon na tayo lahat, nabulok na tayo lahat… ‘yung plastic andyan pa rin,” he said.   Dela Cruz agreed that responsible use and disposal of plastics can help lessen their environmental impact, but that plastics manufacturers “have to show the goods for it.”   Manufacturers “have to have a recovery program, a take-back program,” he said and explained that most recycling efforts are currently made by informal wastepickers.   Ultimately, the problem is “not an environment issue, it’s a labor issue,” according to the Greenpeace campaigner.   “It’s about industry. I’m not against creating employment opportunities, but to say ‘let’s get employment now, and let’s trash the future…’ I don’t think that’s fair… There’s a better way of creating industry,” Dela Cruz added. — VS, GMA News