Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the global trend of people has become avoiding going out in order to minimize physical contact with others. This has naturally led people including me to prefer home deliveries and packaged goods, which are very convenient and efficient. However, this also entails more paper boxes, plastic bags, and styrofoam wastes. According to an article from ENews Today, the profit of major two delivery companies in Korea for the first two quarters have increased by 28% on average. However, this has brought about serious problems as packaging waste has also increased.

In fact, packaging waste has been a big problem in terms of excessive packaging that wraps products too many times, creating three to four layers of plastic bags and boxes per one product being delivered. This is a one of global environmental problems as styrofoam and plastic bags are very hard to recycle, as they are created from polymers, and most of them end up in the ocean and landfill, polluting the sea and land. Also, plastic bags in the ocean are often mistaken for jellyfish by turtles and can lead them to death in consequence.

This problem can be solved using two methods. First, we can change the plastic bag and styrofoam into recyclable packaging. Paper bags can replace plastic bags to a certain degree. However, the main purpose of styrofoam in delivery is for shock absorber. For the mean of shock absorber, delivery companies can utilize biodegradable plastic. Air pouch of EarthAware looks like normal packaging material, but it is made up of recyclable plastic that is biodegraded in five years. This is much quicker than the biodegradation date of styrofoam as it is never degraded.

Secondly, processing plastic waste can be improved. The most basic solution for plastic bags is to be kept and reused whenever they are needed. However, considering that there are only a few plastic packages being recycled, the focus should be on the treatment of these plastic wastes. Pyrolysis of plastics can be one of the solutions. Pyrolysis chemically decomposes plastic at very high temperatures under absence of oxygen and high pressure. As plastics are also a mixture of different polymers, they are thermally decomposed at different temperatures. Those separated plastics can be recycled to make a new mixture of plastics. 

I hope these methods are more improved and commercialized so that it can contribute to the packaging waste problem.

Citation

“Another Side Effect of COVID-19: The Surge in Plastic Pollution: Earth.Org - Past: Present: Future.” Earth.Org - Past | Present | Future, 15 July 2020, earth.org/covid-19-surge-in-plastic-pollution/.

Bockhorn, H, et al. “Stepwise Pyrolysis for Raw Material Recovery from Plastic Waste.” Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, Elsevier, 23 Feb. 1999, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165237098000667.

“Growing Plastic Pollution in Wake of COVID-19: How Trade Policy Can Help.” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 27 July 2020, unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2440.

“Knowledge Exchange for Sustainable Packaging.” Greener Package, www.greenerpackage.com/compost_biodegrade/earthaware_bag-film_materials_are_biodegradable.