Is there a good answer. Are trees to die or shall we suck more oil from the ground to make the plastic?

The environmentalist has a philosophy, but that seems to change depending on who you ask.

My guess is that most of them would say recycled paper, but the amount of recycled paper cannot come close to the demand for the various uses and thus ultimately the trees come down.

"Paper is dead or thus it sleeps."

Depends what you make it from. Some woods that are used are actually not very good for paper. We chip a lot of our old growth hardwood forests for paper, and then use imported wood to add the longer fibres needed for good paper. Go figure.

Hemp makes excellent paper, and it can be cropped three times a year, and it's far less water, fertilizer and pesticide intensive than cotton. Cotton makes good paper, too. As does flax. Hemp in general makes excellent textiles, but the west doesn't use it much anymore. We're fighting to change this, but...

But ultimately, we need to change our entire economy. It's all based on oil. Have a look around you and number the things reliant on oil. The plastics, which are everywhere. The synthetic textiles, which are everywhere. The paints. The glues. The rubber, nearly none of which is now made from 'real' rubber (ie latex). The tar in the road. The fertilizer. Then the implicit oil in the goods you eat and buy, the oil used up in making and distributing them. There's an awful lot of implicit oil in the Californian lemon on the shelf of my Fremantle supermarket.

A 42 gallon barrel of oil can be refined into slightly less than 20 gallons of gasoline with the remaining oil distilled and refined into other products. The energy companies produce as much gas as they can since it's the most valuable product. So the asphalt and petroleum products used to make the plastic are essentially just what's left over from the production of gas.

The world is based on fossil fuel technology for the foreseeable future and we will be making fuel products to feed the demand, so the plastic bags are neither a waste of oil, or a primary reason for the exploration and refinement of the oil. So, I'll take plastic bags at the store.

Wow.
Two impressive responses. I was just making a bit of a joke post. I learned from both your posts.

Good answers.