Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and states were making progress on plastic waste bans. But after months of quarantine, dependency on single-use plastic has skyrocketed.
According to a World Wildlife Fund report, the increase in single-use plastic is projected to increase by 40 percent in the next decade.
The reliance on single-use plastic is most evident in the restaurant industry. For example, Just Salad had been producing recyclable bowls that saved more than 75,000 pounds of plastic per year and when COVID-19 hit they had to pause the program and begin using disposable packaging.
