This study conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts of a standard cotton tote bag with a cradle-to-grave lifespan. For this study, the functional unit was one average cotton tote bag used 50 times over a period of 1 year. The goal was to determine their sustainability and compare it to another sustainable alternative (a paper bag). The assessment covered the key stages: cotton extraction, fabric production, bag manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life disposal. After evaluating these stages, we analyzed environmental impacts across multiple categories, such as global warming potential (GWP), acidification, eutrophication, toxicity, and more. After examining our results, we discovered that cotton tote bags have a significant environmental impact and are not automatically superior to other alternatives, such as single-use paper bags. Instead, paper bags outperform cotton tote bags in at least one studied impact category until 181 uses of said cotton tote bag. However, cotton tote bags outperform paper bags in 5 out of 6 studied impact categories after 75 uses. With this in mind, we recommend that people only choose cotton tote bags as their sustainable alternative to plastics if they are committed to using them for a prolonged period of time with considerable frequency. This will allow them to reach the bag use totals required to offset their emissions. We also recommend recycling these bags to reduce their emission footprint further.
Grocery bags remain very common in grocery stores, and they can be made from materials such as plastics (LDPE or HDPE), paper, polypropylene, cotton, and nylon. Quanyin Tan et al (2023) [3] carried out an LCA of single-use plastic delivery bags (SPDBs) against the reusable plastic delivery boxes (RPDBs) in China. They used GaBi 10.6 software and the Ecoinvent V3.8 (2021) database for their study. The result showed that RPDBs have fewer environmental impacts within city delivery and higher ones during the inter-city delivery. Greenhouse gas emissions from the production of plastics were the largest impact contributor. They concluded that increasing the number of RPDBs would reduce CO2-eq emissions. They advocated for the expansion of the environmental benefits of RPDBs by having a cleaner product design of their materials and suggested further studies to identify the influence of the reuse cycle of the RPDBs.
Ashiq Ahamed et al (2021) [10] study was on the single-use (HDPE, biodegradable plastic, Kraft paper) bags and the reusable (cotton, polypropylene non-woven) bags in Singapore. The data for materials production was obtained from the Ecoinvent database. The study revealed that polypropylene non-woven bags caused the least overall negative environmental impacts, and hence, was the recommended option.
Pooja Yadav et al (2024) [24] study focused on the cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a reusable takeaway food container in Finland using the primary data collected from the industry and secondary data from the literature and Ecoinvent 3.9.1 database. ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method was used for analysis. Results from their study revealed that Global Warming Potential (GWP) was higher than the reusable container and identified the electricity source as the major determinant of GWP. They identified the use phase as the main hotspot of the reusable container and concluded that promoting reusable food packaging and establishing pick-up centers at walking distance should be encouraged. They recommended further study on the littering potential of reusable containers, especially its impact on the marine ecosystem.
The study of Cecilia Askham et al (2021) [18] was on the Life Cycle Assessment of plastic bags and other carrying bags (cotton, PET, HDPE, LDPE, Paper etc.) for groceries in Norway. They used data from Ecoinvent database version 3.7.1 (Ecoinvent 2020) and made assumptions in the absence of some data while the environmental analysis was done using ReCiPe version 2016. From their study, they concluded that grocery bags with multiuse are preferable to the single-use ones. In terms of littering reduction, bio-based grocery bags (cotton, paper, and cardboard) are recommended because of their multiple use time.
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