The Problem with Disposable Foodware

Plastic was introduced in the 1950s as a miraculous material that was cheap, lightweight, and could be thrown away. Now we have realized that there is no “away.” In fact, plastic never actually biodegrades, instead it breaks up into smaller pieces for hundreds of years. All of the plastic we have ever created over the past century still exists today, and much of it is still in our environment.

99% of all plastic is made from fossil fuels. Plastic is directly connected to climate change and it pollutes at every stage: from material extraction to product production to transportation to waste disposal. The production of plastic produces an estimated 1.7 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions globally, and that is only predicted to increase. By 2030, plastic production will emit the equivalent of 295 coal-fired power plants! The climate impacts resulting from these emissions disproportionately affect overburdened and frontline communities.

Plastic affects public health at all stages. As a petroleum product, the emissions produced from plastic production, including fossil fuel extraction and refining, directly affect communities living near these sites and cause increased risk of respiratory distress, asthma, and even cancer. Once produced, plastic products are often found to contain toxic chemicals, and act as a sponge absorbing more chemicals from the environment. Exposure to these chemicals is linked to cancers, endocrine disruption, impaired immunity, and other health implications.

Did you know that on average humans consume the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every week from seafood, the air we breathe, and the water we drink? Yuck!

Only about 2.2% of plastic was recycled in 2018. Because making new plastic is cheap and recycled plastic materials tend to be lower quality, there’s less market incentive to recycle. This means plastic waste is often shipped to developing countries that don’t have the infrastructure to manage such an influx of trash, and many are now refusing to take it.

It feels so good to put recyclables in the blue cart, right? But unfortunately, plastic pollution won’t be solved by recycling. For one thing, almost all the high pollution plastic products we find in the environment—pretty much everything besides soda and water bottles—have no value in today’s recycling systems. People can’t make money off them and so they don’t collect it.

Even plastics that do have value still get littered. Plastic bottles, which do have economic value are still among the top 10 most littered items in beach debris studies. So focusing on making plastics more recyclable doesn’t mean that they won’t end up in the environment.

We can do better—by getting rid of the unnecessary single-use waste when we sit down to eat, and by helping foster new businesses in creating reusable take-out services.

We know that brown paper take-out box and the bioplastic fork seem better for the environment. After all, it says “compostable” on them. While compostable plastics are sometimes better for the environment than traditional plastics, they are not the answer.

Compostable production often results in greater amounts of pollutants, due to the fertilizers and pesticides used in growing the crops and the chemical processing needed to turn organic material into plastic.

Compostable plastics also require an energy-intensive process, the corn that is often used comes from the wasteful agricultural industry, and if they are not properly disposed of at a facility they enter the environment and can be just as if not more toxic, emitting methane gases which are 24x more toxic than CO2). What’s more, they usually don’t effectively compost, and many composters don’t want them because they degrade the value of the compost.

And did you know that only 14 food waste permitted compost facilities in California accept compostable plastics?

The good news is that reuse wins every time, and we can create systems that get people what they want without all the waste.

Over 1 million animals including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds are killed each year from the estimated 100 million tons of plastic debris in our ocean. When mistaken for food by sea life, microplastics kill our local marine life before reaching expected lifespans. If consumed microplastics don’t kill the sea life, they end up on our plates for meals.

Additionally, plastic pollution endangers more than 1,400 species through ingestion or entanglement. From seals stuck in fishing line, to turtles with straws in their noses, to seabirds who starve from bellies full of plastic, plastic pollution is threatening their survival.