In recent years, cotton bags have risen to popularity as an eco-friendly alternative to single-use plastic bags. But the sudden increase in the use of the cotton bag as a basic accessory may actually have created a new problem.
An organic cotton bag needs to be used 20, 000 times to offset (抵消) its overall impact of production on the environment, according to a study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That is equal to daily use for 54 years for just one bag. According to this measure, for Venetia Berry, an artist in London who found she had at least 25 cotton bags in her closet, she would have to live for more than 1, 000 years to offset her current possessions if all her bags were organic.
According to the Circular Laboratory, it requires between 10, 000 and 20, 000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton. And only 15 percent of the 30 million tons of cotton produced every year actually makes its way to textile (纺织品) warehouses. Even when a cotton bag does make it to a treatment plant, most logos printed on them are not recyclable. They’re extremely difficult to break down chemically.
That’s not to say cotton is worse than plastic, or that the two should even be compared. While cotton can use pesticides and has dried up rivers, lightweight plastic bags use fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases, never break down and block the oceans.
Buffy Reid, of the British knitwear label &. Daughter, stopped production of her cotton bags in April 2021. Skincare brand Aesop is changing the composition of their bags to a 60-40 mixture of recycled and organic cotton. Some brands are turning to other textile solutions. The British designer Ally Capellino replaced cotton with hemp (大麻), while Ms. Hindmarch introduced a new version of her original bag, this time made from recycled water bottles. In the end, the simplest solution may be the most obvious; Not every product needs a bag.
【小题1】What do the figures in Paragraph 2 indicate?| A．Cotton bags are not all that perfect. |
| B．Cotton bags have quite a long service life. |
| C．Cotton bags are enjoying widespread popularity. |
| D．Cotton bags require a complex production process. |
| A．They are not recyclable and difficult to break down. |
| B．Their logos are made from planet-friendly materials. |
| C．They require high consumption of water resources. |
| D．Their production generates fossil fuel-related emissions. |
| A．Stopping producing cotton bags. |
| B．Reducing the use of shopping bags. |
| C．Replacing cotton with other materials. |
| D．Changing the composition of cotton bags. |
| A．The cotton bag crisis. |
| B．The rise of cotton bags. |
| C．The comparison between cotton and plastic. |
| D．The production and recycling of cotton bags. |
