Really Bad Lifecycle Analyses

So, I know that lifecycle analyses can be bad. Today's exercise involved trying to track down a suspicious assertion that it would take 131 uses of a cotton shopping bag to reduce the impact of that cotton bag on the environment below using single use disposable bags. R. believes the study must have been funded by plastic bag makers. I know better. People who do life cycle analyses are a rare breed. It was done by the UK government's environment agency. But I'll come bad to that in a minute. I found something even worse.

Behold!

http://ecosystemanalytics.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ACLCA-poster-2012.pdf

It displays pretty gross, since it is a poster. If I find the underlying study, I'll post a link to that. Here is ONE reason why it is one of the worst lifecycle study presentations I have ever seen. It says that in the eastern US, a household can routinely go through 5600 facial tissues in a year. Then it does a bunch of calculations of use per year or lifetime use based on _blowing one's nose due to a cold_.

Error 1: NONE of the annual usage numbers from this calculation come within a factor of 5 of the 5600 sheets per household. The analysis -- as far as I can tell -- doesn't entertain this problem as a problem at all.

Error 2: Apparently these people don't know anyone who comes in from the cold and has to blow their nose when they do.

Error 3: Also, they know no one with allergies.

Error 4: Also, they know no one who cleans their glasses with facial tissue.

Error 5: Also, they know no one who deals with spiders, other bugs, and used chewing gum by picking it up with facial tissue.

Error 6-n: I invite you to suggest your own most typical uses of disposable facial tissues which were left out of this calculation.

I'm going to keep looking for a somewhat decent analysis of handkerchiefs. I've wondered on and off whether handkerchiefs were really an environmental win (cotton does have a huge production cost), however, looking at the number of washes in the lifetime of the handkerchiefs in this study and thinking about how many washes I've seen my handkerchiefs go through, I can tell you straight up that 500+ is much closer to reality than 50.

ETA:

Secondary coverage of that same LCA https://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/pdf/tissues.pdf

Some real gems here (author totes fails to notice any of the above criticism. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE DO YOU ACTUALLY USE TISSUE?).

"Individual needs will likely vary throughout the year, but a simple solution is to rely on a supply of 7 regularly laundered handkerchiefs (one week’s supply) for day-to-day use and to choose disposable tissues, if preferred, only when actively fighting off a cold."

OK, so there is _some_ recognition here that even when not dealing with a cold, a handkerchief has some kind of utility. But it isn't much utility, because the author assumes that one hankie a day will do it. ha ha ha ha ha I start the morning with a handkerchief in each back pocket, but when one gets kinda gross, I toss it into a laundry hamper, and I have locations where I can replenish upstairs and downstairs (because I don't mind walking across a couple rooms to get a hankie, I will resort to tissue if I have to switch floors, so the only way to stick with hankies is to have replenishment handy). I also keep several in my purse. 7 hankies lasts about 2 days and a bit for me, when my allergies are not bad, and I don't have a cold, and I do not in that entire time frame wind up having to use a hankie to mop up some kind of spill (kids face, hands, etc. type of thing. YOU KNOW LIKE YOU MIGHT USE A REGULAR TISSUE).

Again, no evidence whatsoever that this is tissue maker propaganda. And yet, so, so, so stupid.

ETAYA: Let's think about this how many times you can wash it thing. Because whether you go with 50 or 500 or some other number has a huge impact on how the per-use impact of production costs looks.

This is treehugger on the paper vs. cloth napkin question from 2009:

https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/are-paper-napkins-more-environmentally-friendly.html

"In a food service scenario we can assume that the napkins are too worn out or soiled to be used after about 50 uses."

Well, you _can_ assume that. But let's actually ask someone who sells and launders cloth napkins for restaurants how long those napkins actually last.

http://www.dempseyuniform.com/Portals/0/PDF/Brochure_PaperVsClothFacts.pdf

"Milliken Signature cloth napkins can be used 70+ times!" That is their use of the exclamation mark.

http://directtextilestore.com/blog/best-linen-napkins-for-restaurants/

"The Milliken fabric lasts 80-100 cycles, just like traditional linens."

So a factor of 1.5 to 2x has been sacrificed making paper look that much more compelling over cloth -- by a site and a source that ought to be operating to make the cloth look better. WTF is wrong here?

The analysis at treehugger also treats the paper napkin and the cloth napkins as one-for-one. It's a rare restaurant eater who uses just one paper napkin, whereas just using one cloth napkins is pretty typical (I'll probably circle back around to the grocery bag issue in a minute, because even when capacity of the single-use is comparable to the reusable -- a rare situation -- the way baggers treat single-use bags is extremely different compared to reusable. They routinely fit 3-5 times the volume into a reusable in my experience than into a single use of the same size. They correctly do not trust the single use stuff to tolerate that level of packing and wind up using more, or double bagging).

Anyway. Back to napkins.

"Over the course of a year you might wash your napkins 50 times and during the same time you might go through 350 (50 x 7) paper napkins."

Really. You eat at home so infrequently that you literally use _less than one paper napkin per day_? (Someone failed to tell this person there were more than 50 weeks in a year. I guess.) You are probably thus using the kitchen towel as a freebie replacement for what you would use a cloth napkin for, or a paper towel, or running the faucet. Also, you should wash your cloth napkins more often. That is just gross. Maybe he doesn't eat at home?

ETA Still more:

The hankybook website reminds me that disposable tissues were invented for women to remove cold cream from their faces. (Pretty sure that special wipes are the go-to choice for makeup removal and similar today. I rarely wear makeup, but on those occasions where I do need to remove noxema from my face -- yes, I do have a jar! -- I just use a wash cloth and put it directly into the wash. But yeah, removing cold cream from hankies must have been a pain Back In the Day.)

That UK LCA study of carrier bags

Here is the link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf

This is the source of the claim in coverage of the impact of California's ban on single use grocery store bags that a cotton reusable bag has to be used 131 times to be equivalent to a single use grocery store bag -- the claim that got me going on this project in the first place. Really? 131? Not 130? Are we not caring at all about significant digits, then? This isn't really science, then, is it?

Several things to note. The cotton bags they analyzed are the horrifyingly awful ones that hold very little. So, yuck. I don't use those; I use real totes instead, one of which is within the weight range of the cotton bags mentioned (upper end) the other of which blows way past it. FWIW, the upper end bag probably has 50% more capacity than the capacity listed. And the really big bag has probably 3x the upper end capacity. By volume. And I fill those fuckers, because I am never carrying them very far, unlike the hypothetical on-foot shopper in the UK study (I'm headed out to my car like a Normal Murrican; if I were doing this by bicycle, I would have brought the panniers in with me and filled those directly, and the bike would be parked even closer to the shop than the car can be).

Where was I?

Oh, yes. The study does understand that people put more in heavier weight plastic bags than lighter weight ones. And still more into the cotton bags (even the shitty ones they were analyzing). They figure one can get the same volume of groceries home in about half the number of bags if you are using cotton vs. single use bags. And that matches my experience with crappy cotton bags. My experience with my really large bag is that it holds 5+ cotton bags worth of groceries if packed correctly, which few baggers seem willing to do. Possibly they doubt their ability to transfer it packed from the table to the cart? It has great handles; I can just pick it up, pop it on a shoulder and bring it out to the car. Altho I then walk unevenly for a few minutes until I balance back out again.

Their analysis includes end of life stuff, which I find strikingly odd. Paper bags aren't even used in the UK in grocery stores any more, and they say no one uses them again for shopping, even tho they could be, and they include that in their analysis because. . .

"However, the inclusion of reuse for paper carrier bags is intended to illustrate how many times a
paper carrier bag would have to be reused to perform better than other bags, it is not a
statement that this reuse occurs or that it is feasible."

Honestly, it is a little startling. Back In the Day, I used to reuse paper bags as bin liners, but I don't get paper bags often enough to justify that, so not so much. Now, their primary reuse is as a container to drop clothes off at the Middle Class Guilt Reduction Station and, less and less often, transporting books I know longer want to own to the library for donation. I also use paper grocery bags to transport arts, crafts, food, etc. to parties.

Anyway. If my Really Big Bag is twice the size of their crappy cotton bags, then I'll assume that it will take 2x as many single use bags to justify its existence (since this is a by-weight of the input situation). My Really Big Bag needs to displace, thus, 262 (ha) single use bags. Since, when full, it replaces roughly 5 at a time, I need to use it about 50 times when I go to the store. Doesn't sound that hard -- it justifies its existence in a single year, if I use it once a week.

My purple packable bags are a little trickier calculation. They weigh 38 g. They are typically packed at about 1.5 times the capacity of a single use plastic bag, because baggers are chicken shit. I usually pack them about at 2x the capacity of a single use bag. They are made of this stuff:

https://www.chicobag.com/t-what-is-repete

That is post-consumer soda bottle plastic. I figure a chico bag beats a single use bag after no more than 6 uses -- even counting the carabiner, since a lot of that material is also recycled. Especially after you take a look at how they run their production and other sites (employees have their own towels in the loo and cloth napkins in the break room).