About

This year has certainly been a challenging year in many ways for not only our country, but the world.  The economy has shut down for several months and shifted into a near e-commerce focused force due to the  pandemic.  This has brought about lots of outliers and things that were not really thought about before our economy changed so much.  The amount of extra paper products used and trees needing to be harvested to keep up with demand has been a bit staggering and it is all because of the need for more cardboard boxes that have been put into circulation. The change in how we are shopping has increased the use and hence also increased the waste of paper across the world and especially in the United States and European Union.

 

So why did this all take place this year.  Well it really did start with a virus that came out of China.  It was stated that it most likely came from a bat and it spread across the world within a months time.  It turns out that the virus had the fear effect that brought the world to its production needs for brick and mortar stores.  Many countries simply stopped letting stores be open and forced people to stay at home.  This all lead to the surplus of people changing their regular shopping habits and moving to a more stay at home way of life.  The new normal now is to simply shop as little as possible in person and it has changed the shipping world.

 

Amazon had to hire 100,000 people overnight to keep up with the demand for the shipping surge.  Ecommerce went from a relatively small portion of GDP to a massive chunk in just a few weeks.  As people were told to stay inside their homes they ordered most things online and cardboard boxes started to be used at a rate like none other.  This caused the excess waste of paper to rise and the need for recycling to be done more so than ever. It would seem that the change in economic use by the American people will lead to a vast amount of trees to be cut down to keep up with the paper products needed to package and ship these items now.  The likelihood that this is sustainable for a long period of time is slim and we need to work on increasing recycling or cutting down on the shipping used. Be safe be king and recycle please!