Super thought provoking article. Seems pretty disastrous the extent to which reusable bags are handed out for free as virtuous swag. Makes me wonder what a similar analysis would show for reusable water bottles vs plastic - I could see the case for greater average re-use of those vs bags, but perhaps a higher “equivalence threshold” between impacts of reusable vs single use bottles washes out any advantage
Hey Michael just making a note that there are some complaints about how this Danish study created/reported their models of cotton bag impact. For a summary see here from Leo Barasi: https://twitter.com/leobarasi/status/1569410910078357505 . The TLDR is that the impact of cotton used in the study relies on some arguable assumptions; with large sources of uncertainty. Modeling is hard! If we all paired our conclusions alongside metrics of our certainty in these conclusions, the world would perhaps be a different place.
Super thought provoking article. Seems pretty disastrous the extent to which reusable bags are handed out for free as virtuous swag. Makes me wonder what a similar analysis would show for reusable water bottles vs plastic - I could see the case for greater average re-use of those vs bags, but perhaps a higher “equivalence threshold” between impacts of reusable vs single use bottles washes out any advantage
Hey Michael just making a note that there are some complaints about how this Danish study created/reported their models of cotton bag impact. For a summary see here from Leo Barasi: https://twitter.com/leobarasi/status/1569410910078357505 . The TLDR is that the impact of cotton used in the study relies on some arguable assumptions; with large sources of uncertainty. Modeling is hard! If we all paired our conclusions alongside metrics of our certainty in these conclusions, the world would perhaps be a different place.