What is the environmental impact of using paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware?

Question

What is the environmental impact of using paper plates, cups, and plastic silverware?

Answer 1

You see, plastic items, polythene bags, pesticides like DDT, chemical fertilizers etc. are all non-bio degradable. It means that the decomposition of these materials do not take place in the environment and so, they stay as such in the environment forever.

Non-biodegradable substances are those substances which are not degradable by natural processes.These things stay in Earth for thousands and thousands of years. A well known example is the Plastic, which we use daily.These are polymeric products which are not utilised or digested by any living organism, as they don't have digestive enzymes for such polymers. So,  it is called Non-biodegradable, The best way to prevent this accumulation of Non-Biodegradable waste is to follow the 3 well-known R's. Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. Let's just hope that nothing happens to our future generation.

Answer 2

Well, it kind of depends on WHY you are using them.  Paper is a completely renewable resource.  However it takes power (usually coal power plants) and water to turn trees into paper products.  Plastics DO NOT biodegrade, ever.  They just continue to break down into smaller and smaller particles, untill they are microscopic (but STILL plastics) and then enter the food chain at a microscopic level.

They have now come out with new plastic LIKE (but not plastic) utensiles, that I believe are made from potatoes, and another type from corn.  They ARE biodegradable.  

Of course still takes water, power, energy to take those products from being a crop in the ground, to silverware on your store shelf.

I'm very anti plastic.  I still have a large Costco size box of the plastic silverware, and a large Costco size bag of the styrofoam plates in my food storage/emergency preparedness pantry.  

Back to the "why."  We do not use these items for daily use, or even for family reunions.  For family reunions (simply staggering in size on my husbands side of the family) we use the Church, and the silverware in the Church kitchen, or we use one of the local public schools, and use the silverware in their cafeteria.

So "why" have these items at all?  The flooding in the midwest going on currently is a PRIME example.  These people have a little bit of fresh water in towers.  It is completely stupid to use that clean water for washing dishes, and flushing toilets.  That water should be rationed like crazy right now, and only used to drink, cook with, clean babies, and clean wounds with.  It shouldn't even be used to take showers with (sponge baths, and baby wipes for all right now).  

So most products, even the bottle water has it's place, and use.  Use of products like that should be limited (as much as humanely possible) times of serrious flooding, big fire areas, and long term power outages, or even something completely unexpected, like a major storm, where you have to take in people.  Also of course during a pandemic, to cut down on any possible spread of germs.

Daily use though....thats just completely silly, and selfish.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 3

Paper Products come from trees and the more we use the more trees are cut down. They can decompose so they aren't terrible but they do sit in landfills until they decompose.

Plastic does not decompose so it sits in landfills forever!!

Answer 4

The paper products are not that great of an environmental impact.  They are made from a renewable resource and readily decompose.  Their problem is the amount of space they take in landfills until they decompose, and the amount of methane they produce as they decompose (methane is 30 times more reactive to the atmosphere than CO2).

Plastic silverware is another story.  One of the key components in plastics is oil.  I hope I don't need to expand on that.  The other problem is that once it goes in a landfill, it's there forever.  It does not decompose.

Answer 5

Using common sense, one would know there is a time & place for everything and most of the civilized world is coming to grips with the facts we can reuse almost everything we produce in some fashion or another. The problem is, there are too few facilities to handle the recycling process.

I would 100% support recycling and our town has limited resources for doing so, but I do my small part when I can to keep from adding to the already existing problems our children and grandchildren are going to be facing in the not so far future.

Answer 6

The answer is negative impact. A stainless steel cutlery item can last a lifetime and beyond. The plastic option once used is often thrown away and then more are produced and therefore wasting energy.