A plastic bag: carbon footprint

A plastic bag comes in at about 0.04 kg CO₂e (one bag, made).

Of the 16 things you buy Carbonle tracks, A plastic bag sits at #1 from the lightest — one of the lightest.

This is the one-off cost of making the thing, before you use it. It's why a reusable tote only wins after many trips, and why a phone's footprint is the factory, not the charger.

Tiny on its own. The problem is making billions of them.

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Compare with

Figures from UK Environment Agency carrier-bag LCA (2011), licensed government LCA.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.