Ninety cities and counties in California have banned plastic single-use grocery bags, with a statewide ban possible this legislative session. Here in Colorado, Boulder has enacted a 10 cent fee on all disposable bags — paper and plastic, and Denver is considering a similar five cent fee.

Clearly, all of these measures are meant to do the right thing for the environment. Even some retailers, such as Whole Foods, don’t even offer plastic as an option and charge their own fee for bags.

We all know how terrible plastic bags are for the environment. But when we are asked, paper or plastic, and we choose paper, how do we know that is really the right choice?

According to Leyla Acaroglu, it’s just not that simple. In her recent TEDTalk, she explains that when you think about the entire lifecycle of a product, such as a paper or plastic bag, there is a lot more to it than simply what the product is made of. Everything that is created goes through lifecycle stages — extraction, manufacturing, packaging and transportation, use, and end of life. And every single stage has an impact on the environment. So, while we all think of paper as the environmentally friendly choice — the paper actually has a much larger impact on the environment than the plastic when you consider the product’s full lifecycle.

She calls things like this Environmental Folklore and explains that many of these issues can be addressed by designing better systems and services to alleviate these types of problems. She looks at the big picture and is trying to find ways to solve our environmental problems through smart design.

When looking at the legislative perspective, it makes much more sense to encourage reuse of all types of bags — regardless of their material — rather than simply banning plastic bags because of their perceived environmental impact. Communities that are enacting fees on single-use bags seem to be doing just that — encouraging consumers to bring in their own reusable bag in order to avoid the fee.

Leyla’s TEDTalk touches on a number of other topics and design issues, which I found to be quite thought-provoking. See her whole talk below.