Plastic reduction substitute or invisible pollution killer? The widespread use of non-woven bags needs attention

With the strengthening of plastic pollution control in China, non-degradable disposable plastic bags have gradually withdrawn from the market, and many alternative products have emerged accordingly, the most common of which is non-woven fabrics. From the tote bags sold in the daily grocery shopping supermarket, to the milk tea and lunch box packaging bags used in the takeaway platform, as well as many portable disposable daily necessities, many of them are non-woven products.

In the early years, canvas bags will be called environmental protection bags, and now a variety of non-woven bags on the market are also named "environmental protection bags", and even many consumers believe that non-woven bags are cloth bags, which are more environmentally friendly than plastic bags and will not cause plastic pollution. Why has non-woven bags become the new favorite in the packaging industry, can it be used as a substitute for plastic bags, how to use it to achieve real environmental protection, and how to dispose of it in the future?

From the name of non-woven fabric, many people think that it is a kind of cloth bag, but it is not. It is called non-woven only because it has the appearance and certain properties of cloth, but it is not woven, and it also has another name: non-woven fabric.

In the national standard GB/T 5709-1997 "Textile Nonwovens Terminology", non-woven fabrics are defined as "oriented or randomly arranged fibers, which are made of sheets, webs or wadding pads made by rubbing, holding, or bonding, or a combination of these methods." "These fibers mainly include chemical fibers and natural fibers.

According to the public data of China Industry Information Network, the three major fibers used in the production of non-woven fabrics in China are polypropylene (PP) (accounting for 63% of the total), polyester (PET) (accounting for 23% of the total) and viscose fiber (accounting for 8% of the total), and the remaining 2% is acrylic fiber, 1.5% is polyamide (PA), and 2.5% is other fibers. Among them, only viscose fiber is the processing of natural fibers, and polyester, polypropylene, acrylic and polyamide fibers are chemical fibers, they are also the main polymer components of synthetic plastics, from which it is concluded that nearly ninety percent of the non-woven fabrics produced on the market are made of chemical fibers, which also confirms the fact that most of the non-woven fabrics belong to plastic products.

However, in the minds of many consumers, it is seen as an acceptable alternative to plastic reduction. According to the "Yangtze River Delta New Regulations on Plastic Ban and Restriction Consumer Side Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission, 76.4% of respondents said that they have non-woven bags at home, and many consumers agree that it is a substitute for plastic bags, which is environmentally friendly and will not cause pollution.

Zhonghuan Daily reporter searched for non-woven bag customization in shopping software, and found that many businesses also crowned the keyword "environmental protection bag" on the search results of non-woven bags, since they are all plastic products, why non-woven bags are considered more environmentally friendly? This is because non-woven fabrics are usually thicker than plastic bags, and its toughness is strong, conducive to recycling and reuse, so from this point of view it is considered to be environmentally friendly. But in terms of texture, non-woven fabric is not environmentally friendly, and it is as difficult to degrade as the composition of plastic bags. In particular, polypropylene (PP), the most commonly used material for non-woven fabrics, can hardly be degraded into environmentally friendly substances in the natural environment. Secondly, the commonly used polyester (mainly PET) material has the same problem, and most semi-aromatic polyester cannot be degraded naturally.

However, these refractory non-woven fabrics are used in more and more occasions: from milk tea packaging bags, handbags sold in supermarkets, to face towels, kitchen cleaning towels, to disposable medical supplies, agricultural crop protective films... Non-woven fabrics can be seen everywhere. In particular, non-woven fabrics used in medical and health products cannot be recycled because they are polluted or have potentially harmful substances, and they belong to dry garbage in garbage classification, which can only be disposed of by landfill and incineration.

So why do non-woven fabrics still get the favor of many businesses? This stems from the implementation of the "plastic ban".

Since 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), the sale of non-degradable plastic bags has been restricted or prohibited in supermarkets, catering packaging, and takeaway services. As a result, as a substitute for traditional plastic bags, all kinds of bags that are pinned on the hope of environmental protection are popular, among which non-woven bags are the largest.

The reason is that there is no corresponding national standard for non-woven shopping bags, and the industry standard FZ/T 64035-2014 "Nonwoven Shopping Bags" has been implemented, which belongs to the category of "textile products - other textile product standards" according to the International Standard Classification (ICS). In other words, non-woven fabrics belong to the textile industry, not the plastic chemical industry, and are temporarily in the blind spot of plastic supervision. The practice of replacing traditional non-degradable plastic bags with non-woven bags actually belongs to "playing a side ball", and the word "cloth" makes it look different from the non-degradable plastic bags in the traditional sense, but most non-woven bags do not belong to "cloth bags" or "non-plastic products".

But non-woven bags can also be "environmentally friendly", and its premise needs to be achieved through reuse. In 2011, the UK Environment Agency published a study that showed that non-woven bags need to be reused at least 11 times to make up for the pollution they cause. The China Plastic Degradable Plastics Professional Committee has also mentioned that if the non-woven bag is only used once, the energy consumption of a single non-woven bag is 17.8 times that of a disposable plastic bag, and the carbon emission is 16.7 times that of a disposable plastic bag. In short, "throwaway" non-woven bags are less environmentally friendly than single-use plastics.

However, in real life, consumers are not satisfied with the reuse and disposal of non-woven fabrics. The results showed that only 10% of the respondents knew that the raw materials for the production of non-woven bags were mainly polymers, and 23.4% of the respondents chose to discard them directly; the report also showed that nearly 30% of the non-woven bags were used as garbage bags, and 42.6% of the respondents said that they would not be used outside because of their "poor quality" and "ugly". A garbage hauler in a residential area in Beijing also revealed to reporters that most of the domestic garbage of the residents of the building he is responsible for every day is takeaway garbage, including a lot of garbage such as non-woven insulation bags, many of which can be reused, but basically everyone will throw it out with the lunch box.

Chongqing CPPCC member, Shapingba District People's Congress Standing Committee deputy director Bian Weihui suggested to resist the "disposable" non-woven bags flooded use, he said, the essence of non-woven bags is still plastic products, the public generally mistakenly think that non-woven bags are traditional cloth bags, the perception of its pollution problem is vague, some businesses in order to save costs, reduce the loss of the "plastic limit order", widely use the material is thin, easy to break the non-woven bag replacement, which to a certain extent violates the original intention of the "plastic limit order", which will lead to new pollution, need to pay great attention.

So how can we make the best use of non-woven bags and be more environmentally friendly? Bian Weihui gave suggestions: first of all, improve the industry standard for non-woven bags. From the moisture-proof, tough, load-bearing, thickness and other aspects of the development of production standards, the non-woven bags that meet the standards can be circulated in the market, otherwise the same as the traditional plastic bags to be punished. Guide manufacturing enterprises to earnestly fulfill their social responsibilities, comply with industry standards, strengthen the universal design of non-woven bags, and meet the needs of non-specific scenarios.

Second, intensify supervision. Relevant departments have formulated more specific management and guidance measures for non-woven bags, and included non-woven bags that do not meet industry standards into the supervision scope of the "plastic restriction order", giving full play to the joint force of departmental supervision, strengthening the supervision and inspection of production enterprises, and severely cracking down on unqualified production and sales. Regulate the publication of advertisements by enterprises and merchants, require platforms to strengthen review, and strictly prohibit misleading or false publicity of environmental protection behaviors.

Finally, strengthen publicity and guidance. Strengthen the publicity and popularization of "disposable" non-woven bags, let them get rid of the false name of "cloth", return to the true nature of plastic products, and guide the general public to correctly understand non-woven bags. Vigorously advocate the concept of environmental protection and energy saving, encourage recycling, and correctly classify and put discarded bag garbage. And play a role in government guidance and demonstration, local environmental protection departments issued a notice requiring units to strengthen quality and durability checks when using non-woven bags, and resist "disposable" non-woven bags.

From the perspective of catering merchants and consumers, the China Industrial Textiles Industry Association and Meituan Tsingshan Plan also jointly suggested that the idea of "source reduction-reuse-recycling" should be followed, and the use and disposal of non-woven bags should be combined with the life cycle.

First of all, the "reusable" characteristics of non-woven bags are guaranteed. For catering merchants, suppliers should be required to produce according to the standards and purchase non-woven bags that meet the requirements of the standards to ensure the durability of the non-woven bags. Only when the number of uses is much greater than that of plastic bags, can it better reflect its environmental value, which is one of the hard conditions for non-woven bags as environmentally friendly bags. In addition, merchants need to combine the actual use needs of consumers, and design and produce on the premise of matching consumers' willingness to use non-woven bags, so as to reduce the limitations of factors such as appearance, size, and load-bearing scope, and promote more reuse of non-woven bags.

Secondly, reduce the use of unnecessary non-woven bags from the source. Merchants should order an appropriate number of bags according to the business situation of the store to avoid excessive waste, consult whether they need bags before packaging and delivering offline meals, and then choose the appropriate packaging bags according to the actual needs of the meals, and optimize the space utilization rate of the bags according to the number of meals to avoid the situation of "large bags for small meals". For consumers, they should try to bring their own environmentally friendly cloth bags, and tell the merchants in advance that they do not need to pack the bags, and according to their own use needs, if the non-woven bags cannot be reused many times in the future, they should take the initiative to refuse the non-woven bags provided by the merchants.

Finally, if non-woven bags are necessary, they should be used to the fullest extent possible and closed-loop treatment should be used. Merchants can do a good job of reminding online and offline, and encourage consumers to bring their own eco-friendly bags offline. Encourage consumers to reuse existing non-woven bags for many times, and merchants with conditions can also formulate corresponding incentives, or launch non-woven bag recycling activities, and strengthen cooperation with resource recycling enterprises to improve the recycling rate of non-woven bags. In their daily lives, consumers should prioritize the use of reusable bags such as non-woven bags that they already have at home, and use them as many times as possible. For non-woven bags that have been damaged, dirty, and cannot be reused, they should be sent to the recycling point for recycling.