Fig. 7. Recycling Bins from an apartment in HK.
Fig. 8. Recycling Bins for used clothes recycling from an apartment in Hong Kong.
(Shenzhen) and Hong Kong (Hung Hom) are presented in Figs.5
and 6. Also in order to support government’s activities, individuals
also need to take some initiative to promote recycling activity.
One typical example is the initiative taken by residents of an
apartment in Hong Kong to promote recycling options, which can
be seen from Figs.7 and 8. Such activities should be initiated and
continued by all individuals.
The emphasis on interpretation phase of this analysis is not on
concluding which one is much better. Actually the conclusion needs
to be drawn on how to reduce the impacts caused by carbon
footprint by all variety of shopping bags. One of the possibleways to
decipher this is by means of finding ways to reduce, reuse and
recycle. In fact, many retail stores have started utilizing this
philosophy of reducing, recycling and reusing the grocery bags.
Building up public awareness and motivation to reduce, reuse and
recycle all these bags will definitely help to resolve the environmental
problems to a greater magnitude.
4. Conclusions
This research article encompasses the study of carbon footprint
of different types of shopping bags in both cradle to gate and cradle
to grave stages in China, Hong Kong and India. Among different
phases of a product’s life cycle, disposal phase assumes greater
significance as far as the environmental impact on carbon footprint
is concerned. The peculiar part of this phase is that end-of-life
scenarios are mostly decided by consumer behaviour and governmental
policies. In this research paper, an exploratory study was
performed to analyse the impact of various shopping bags on
carbon footprint by using secondary data for LCI to manufacturing
phase. In this stage, reusable bags such as non-woven bags made
out of polypropylene followed by woven cotton bags seem to be
environmental friendly compared to the conventional plastic and
paper bags for the functional unit assumed for this comparative
study. As far as the end-of-life phase is concerned, it lies mostly in
the hands of the public. Also it is vitally important to use real values
rather than assumptions, which can be obtained only from the
actual users. Hence the inputs from public opinion were employed
to deduce the values for end-of-life scenarios. In the first stage of
LCA modelling without disposal options, according to the LCI data
and the software used for this study, which also has certain
hypothesis and assumptions, non-woven bags made out of polypropylene
are found to be better in terms of carbon footprint
compared to its counterparts. However this stage of conclusion
depends solely upon the secondary data and the LCA software
employed for the study. Public opinionwas used to model the usage
and disposal values of LCA, where the GWP values of all bags were
less in all cases.
It was found in all of the cases under study that the more the
option of reuse is chosen, the lower the environmental impact. In
one of the cases in this study, itwas found that even a 5% increase in
reuse option selected, around 20% of carbon footprint will be saved.
Hence, the key here is that consumers must reuse the bags till they
can be discarded. Once they decide to discard, the other best option
would to be sending the bag to recycling rather than disposing it off
to landfill.
The production process of the various shopping bags considered
in this study is a long chain and the amount of carbon footprint of
the same could be different in today’s scenario when compared to
the results presented in this study, derived from second-hand data
sources. It should also be noted that the number of times each type
of bag can be reused and potential of each type of bag to be recycled
with their consequent environmental implications also would be
different from each other.
The consumers’ behaviour and governmental policies are pivotal
in terms of encouraging people to go for reusable bags and promote
more recycling systems to scale down the environmental impacts
made by any type of shopping bag.We have only one planet to live it
is imperative for every one of us to take care of the same. We must
unite as one human family in new understanding and care for this
wonderful nest in the stars: Planet Earth, our home.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
for providing funding support to this research through project
RP7Q and to all the respondents to the survey conducted in China,
India and Hong Kong. The authors are also thankful to Dr. Xuemei
Ding, Laili Wang and Weibang Chen, of Donghua University,
Shanghai, China for their help in conducting the survey in China.