Paper or plastic? Or neither? LCBO decision to trash paper bags could signal shift in single-use debate

The move to replace single-use plastics with paper products has gotten hopes up in northern Ontario's forest industry, especially the region's sagging pulp and paper mills. 

But the LCBO's decision last week to stop handing out paper bags is a sign that in the end, re-usable may trump recyclable.

"To be quite honest, I think it is an amazing move," said Calvin Lakhan, a scientific researcher in the department of environment and urban change at York University.

"The truth is any time you use single-use anything it's not good for the environment."

Lakhan says it's a "misnomer" that paper is more environmentally-friendly than plastic, especially the lower grade brown paper used in shopping bags that isn't often recycled into something else and ends up decomposing in a landfill. 

"I don't think we should be using our trees to be making bags that we carry out to our grocery store or bring back our booze in," he said.

Martin Fairbank— a forest industry consultant, who worked for years with Abitibi paper, a company founded at the now closed mill in Iroquois Falls— says it "sounds a little odd" to hear of the LCBO moving away from paper products in the name of going green.

He says the forest industry around the world is focused on making new products out of paper, including tape, bubble envelopes and food packaging, including pouches for pet food and other products. 

"I think this trend of paper replacing plastic products will continue to grow," said Fairbank. 

"It's at a particularly good time."

That's because the paper sector has been struggling, with the market for newspapers, flyers, computer paper and other products rapidly declining.

The hope of this new market for single-use paper had workers at the Domtar mill in Espanola hoping their jobs with survive the downturn, as in recent years they were making everything from popcorn bags to muffin cup to bandages.

But last week, when the company announced it was shutting down the pulp and paper plant indefinitely, it noted that the specialty paper market had gotten a lot more crowded, with larger mills converting their paper machines over to making single-use products.

The recent viewing of paper and wood products in a greener light was a stark reversal from the early days of the environmental movement, when the cutting of trees was the symbol for harming the Earth. 

"I think the industry did not do a very good job of countering that argument," said Fairbank, noting that the wood business replants the trees it cuts down, unlike when forests are cleared to make way for subdivisions or farms. 

"The industry is being heard a lot better these days."

Tamara Stark, the campaigns director for forest protection group Canopy, says instead of cutting down billions of trees every year, there is new technology to use "regenerative crops" such as straw and hemp to make single-use packaging.

"It's more of a transition away from materials that probably have a better purpose in life to be able to provide the services they do in terms of ecological functions," she said.

"We do need to keep more of our natural forest standing and in tact in order to mitigate against climate change."

Lakhan says the total shift away from single-use products also harkens back to the early days of the environmental movement in the 1980s when we first heard the words: "reduce, reuse, recycle."

"It's not just a catchy phrase. It's the order we're supposed to do things," he said. 

"In many ways, society has had a love affair with recycling. There's an immediate feedback when I put something in the bin. I feel like I'm doing my part.

"It's really important that whatever decision we make, it needs to be substantiated by science and not just feel good environmentalism where we think we're doing the thing that's best for the planet."