Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, including Americans’ waste disposal habits.

That was one of the big takeaways from two new Pacific Northwest garbage and recycling studies that were released recently. Both showed a serious uptick in the amount of trash people are generating and, in some cases, disposing of improperly.

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Efforts to combat coronavirus spread have produced a plastics surge.

That ramped-up plastic production provides fresh impetus to proposals aimed at curbing how much of that material gets dumped into the environment.

Manufacturers have been working overtime to supply disposable personal protective equipment, takeout food containers and packaging required for all those home deliveries.

Officials in some areas last year also delayed or rolled back restrictions on single-use plastic bags.

A Pacific Northwest paper mill has begun producing new grades of paper made from recovered fiber, a response to changing end markets and growing customer interest in recycled content.

Inland Empire Paper Company recently announced the new packaging sheet made from 100% recycled fiber and lightweight bagstock paper made from at least 30% recycled fiber.

The products will lead to an uptick in recovered material consumption at the Spokane, Wash.-area pulp and paper mill, which has long used recovered fiber but has used less over the years due to quality concerns.

Researchers have shown how disposable face masks could be recycled to make roads, in a circular economy solution to pandemic-generated waste. Their study shows that using the recycled face mask material to make just one kilometer of a two-lane road would use up about 3 million masks, preventing 93 tons of waste from going to landfill.

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) is collecting orders online for cloth face coverings th

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a dramatic increase in the use of plastic, the main component in masks, gloves, hand sanitizer bottles, protective medical suits, test kits, takeout containers, delivery packaging and other items central to our new, locked-down, hyper-hygienic way of life.

A recycling plant in Tanzania’s port city of Dar es Salaam has traded paper for plastic bottles and started making anti-coronavirus face shields that are being snatched up by hospitals and health centres nationwide.

Continue reading at Reuters

SWANA joined over 170 other organizations urging Congress to include direct relief to cities, towns, and villages in future federal assistance packages in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The unprecedented coronavirus public health crisis has strained municipal budgets across the United States. This will, in turn, test their ability to provide essential services to communities and support local economic activity in these critical times.

Two City Councilmembers are pushing legislation that would create composting and electronics waste drop-off sites to compensate for recycling reductions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the Community Organics and Recycling Empowerment (CORE) Act, the city would place three drop-off sites for organics and community recycling centers for hazardous or e-waste in each community district by June 2021. The 177 centers would be open 20 hours a week, at minimum.

The pandemic is changing the dialogue around reusable packaging, although not everyone agrees that this shift is necessarily a bad one.