Comments biks has made
Paper vs. Ceramic plates
I agree that this response was a bit unhelpful. I found this site :
http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/pdfs/seeds_06/Paper%20vs%20Cera ...where someone has done a study in canada for a restaurant. Quite an interesting read. The most interesting section in relation to environmental impact is :
".. assuming an average useful life of two years for each porcelain plate which is considerably conservative, using porcelain plates would still be a better choice in terms of global warming impact. "Of course, they've made lots of assumptions, but at least they're all listed in the study. On Umbra on paper plates posted 1 year, 9 months ago 15 Responses