Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170239
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B/1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But increasingly sophisticated studies that follow a variety of products from factory to dump are casting doubts on these long-held and often emotional convictions.
The re-examination has stirred dissent and even personal attacks within the environmental movement as traditional biases are challenged by a myriad of studies, some of them paid for by industry.
"It's dollars and livelihood for companies, and it's also the credibility of the environmental movement," said Bruce Weddle, a director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Instead of merely considering the waste created by a product, conservationists and others are taking into account the entire manufacturing process of items ranging from grocery bags to diapers. Did it pollute the air or water? Were renewable resources, such as trees, or finite resources, such as oil, used? How much energy and water were consumed?
The questioning has produced converts in some surprising quarters and sparked acrimony in the process.
Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist for the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said he was viewed as traitor by some of his colleagues in the environmental movement after he suggested that disposable diapers might not be so inferior to cloth diapers after all.
"A member told me that I should be locked up in a jail cell with Joseph Hazelwood of the Exxon-Valdez," Hershkowitz said, referring to the captain whose ship leaked huge volumes of crude oil into Alaskan waters.
Many environmentalists have concluded that there simply is "no free ride," that most products carry environmental price tags regardless of how they have been promoted.
"Most people have an innate feeling that natural things are inherently less damaging than things produced in chemical plants," said Norman Dean, executive director of Green Seal, a newly founded non-profit environmental labeling organization.
"But when you start digging into the nuts and bolts of how products are made and used, you learn a lot of things that are not intuitively obvious," he said. "There are complicated tradeoffs that have to be made."
For example, house paints contain solvents that contribute to air pollution, but substitutes for the solvents may be more toxic, he said.
In the case of paper versus plastic shopping bags, the consensus seems to be that shoppers should select whichever they will reuse or recycle - except near the beach, where plastic can hurt marine life if it is improperly disposed of. Environmentalists note that pollution is created in the production of both types of sacks and that both generally end up in landfills anyway.
Decades-old environmental convictions were shaken up by a recent Canadian study that found foam cups are not environmentally inferior - and may be even superior - to paper cups. The study, by University of Victoria chemistry Professor Martin Hocking, received no financing from the paper or the plastics industry.
Hocking considered, among other things, the amount of energy, raw materials and chemicals used to make both paper and polystyrene cups and the amounts of pollution produced.
"I think the cups are about comparable," said Jan Beyea, a senior scientist with the Audubon Society. "Asking me which is better is like asking me whether I would rather be shot with a .22 or a .38."
Whatever the evaluations may show, the public seems to assume that paper is environmentally preferable to plastic.
David Stuck, a manager at the American Paper Institute Inc., said an independent consulting report projected that paper sack sales, after declining about 3 percent annually in the 1980s, will gain about 1.5 percent annually in the 1990s, a bigger increase than for plastic bags. "The primary reason is the environment," he said.
Customer concerns about the environment also prompted McDonald's to switch from polystyrene hamburger clamshell packaging in November to paper-based plastic wrapping.
Indeed, polystyrene's poor image was behind more than 500 proposals nationwide to ban the material in the past three years. About 38 bans are now in effect.
Until recently, many polystyrene products were made with chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which deplete the protective ozone layer. Most makers have switched to CFC substitutes, which either do not destroy ozone or do so at a significantly reduced rate.
But even with the use of substitutes, polystyrene continues to be criticized by some environmentalists. The objections are many, ranging from the release of toxic chemicals and smog-forming gases during manufacturing to the threats that foam pellets pose to marine life that might mistake them for food.
A 1988 EPA study found that only 2 percent of plastic packaging is recycled, compared with 25.6 percent of paper packaging. The polystyrene industry has set itself a goal of recycling 25 percent of its products by 1995. The paper industry hopes to have 40 percent of its products recycled by 1995.
Weddle of the EPA said the public tends to think polystyrene is harmful environmentally because it does not biodegrade. But contrary to public opinion, biodegradability is little valued by some environmentalists.
"I question whether degradability is even a desirable attribute given the way we manage waste today," said Richard Denison, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Disposable diapers are another symbol of waste, and many communities have tried to ban them. Although environmentalists tend to consider cloth diapers preferable, the feeling is not unanimous.
Weddle, director of the EPA's municipal solid waste division, said that cloth diapers may be environmentally preferable in one case, and disposable diapers in another. "It certainly isn't clear-cut."
by CNB