This question has always been in lime light and most of us feel that it’s an easy choice! If your answer is Paper…. think twice!!
Obviously paper is renewable, bio-degradable and compostable resource but do you know how is paper made?
First with the help of heavy machinery large number of trees are logged off, this process requires huge amount of fossil fuels and disturbs the ecological balance of the environment. The green vegetation is now a barren land!
The bark of the trees collected is allowed to dry out for 2-3 years and chipped to sq. inch size that again involves machinery. The wood is then cooked under pressure at high temperature with chemical mixture of limestone & acid for several hours to get a completely digested “wood pulp”. To make some amount of pulp, thrice the amount of wood chips are required.
To get that shinny white paper, the pulp needs to be washed with thousands of gallons of water & bleach. More color is added to water and then pulp-water are mixed in 1:400 ratio & thrashed into web of bronze wires. Water drains out and what we get is the roll of paper!
Now you know how much chemical, mechanical, electrical, fossil energy is required in making and transporting paper. Whereas, plastic takes 20 times less water and is easy to transport.
Now is the time to change your perception and switch to plastic from paper!!