Single-use plastics are an environmental nightmare and are found everywhere in modern American kitchens.
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10 Simple Ways to Eliminate Plastic from Your Life | Everlane
Since the pandemic began more plastic has been flowing through American kitchens than usual both because people are ordering in more often — and amassing piles of takeout plastic cutlery and straws in the process — and because people are cooking at home more — and buying more ingredients that come in clamshells and wrapped in plastic wrap. In all early reports suggest that these one-off adjustments are really adding up. Jonathan Levy a recycling and waste reduction expert in Los Angeles says he and his colleagues have “seen the amount of waste and recycling generated by households nearly double” in the past year much of which appears to be plastic food packaging or tableware.
As concerning as this spike may be it may be easy for many of us to write it off as we’re used to the ubiquity of plastic products in our kitchens. Many of us barely think about them except perhaps when we’re throwing them in the trash or recycling them implicitly trusting waste management systems to deal with them properly.
But in recent years a series of studies and reporting most notably in-depth analyses by NPR and John Oliver’s team at Last Week Tonight have made it increasingly clear that America isn’t nearly as good at managing plastic waste as many people think — and the environmental and public health costs of producing using and disposing of plastic may be higher than most of us ever imagined. In fact the burdens associated with using single-use plastics are so high relative to the amount of time consumers actually use them that the United Nations and other groups considered their use one of the greatest environmental crises facing the world long before the arrival of COVID-19 increased demand for them.
