The goal of the study under discussion is to analyse the carbon
footprint of these four types of bags in China, Hong Kong and India
with the available data from a secondary source (cradle to gate) in
the first step and in the second step, to study the effect of
consumer’s attitude and policy dimensions in the carbon footprint
of these four types of shopping bags (cradle to grave). The scope of
this study includes the comparative investigation of carbon footprint
of plastic, paper, non-woven and woven shopping bags in
both cradle to gate and grave states from the data sources
mentioned above in China, Hong Kong and India. The cradle to gate
assessment phase of this study considers impacts at each life cycle
stage of four types of shopping bags under consideration which
includes extraction/processing or growing/harvesting of resources;
the process of manufacturing; transport from the manufacturer to
the wholesaler/retailer as indicated in the secondary data sources
from which the cradle to gate data were referred. For cradle to grave
stage, public opinion from China, Hong Kong and India on
percentage of reuse, recycle and disposal to landfill were considered
to build the end-of-life scenarios in addition to the above
mentioned areas in cradle to gate stage.
To derive the functional unit which suits better for the three
territories considered, the consumption statistics of shopping bags
was referred from the literature pertaining to China, Hong Kong
and India. Among the four bags under consideration in this present
study, statistics were readily available on the consumption of
plastic bags. As per our currently available literature survey on