PLANET
OT LONG AFTER the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States earlier this year , MJ Algarra began to notice a disturbing trend around her home in Miami Beach , Florida . At first , it was disposable gloves — dozens of them — littering streets and parking lots . Then face masks and wipes began to appear , too , usually tossed on the ground as people were exiting stores .
“ It was honestly mind-blowing ,” says Algarra , who one day counted and picked up 52 gloves in a two-block stretch . “ We already have to deal with so much debris as it is — and now gloves and masks .”
Algarra runs a nonprofit with the self-explanatory name
Clean This Beach Up . Unable to organize her usual group volunteer cleanups for safety reasons , she turned to social media to raise awareness , inviting people to submit photos of pandemic-related litter under the hashtag
# TheGloveChallenge .
Thousands of responses poured in from around the world , a heartbreaking catalog of the plastic pollution that has emerged as one of the pandemic ’ s side effects . Preventing exposure to the virus has resulted in
untold increases of single-use plastics , not only in protective equipment and cleaning supplies , but takeaway containers and other artifacts of quarantine lifestyles .
FINDING SOLUTIONS TO IMPLEMENT It doesn ’ t take long before debris cast onto pavement makes its way to water . Washed into sewers and blown by the wind , the world ’ s trash is being swept into oceans at an alarming rate . Much of it is plastic
that ends up in the sea every year , killing wildlife and polluting our beaches .
One of the first efforts to quantify this tide of waste came from Dr .
Jenna Jambeck , a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia who led
a landmark 2015 study published in the journal Science . Jambeck and colleagues calculated that 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated by 192 coastal countries in 2010 , and estimated that eight million metric tons of it was going into the oceans every year .
Recycling alone won ’ t solve the problem . The solutions need to be both bigger and multifaceted , which is why a supply chain and sustainability concept called the circular economy has become more important than ever . A circular economy uses less plastic to start , and what does get used is designed to be repurposed or reused . The material moves in a closed-loop system multiple times , taking on multiple forms .
“ In my world , if we can have no waste — if we
behave like nature and every output of every system becomes an input — that ’ s sort of the ultimate ,” says Jambeck , who partnered with HP to study the impact of the company ’ s collaboration with local workers in Haiti to collect plastic water bottles and other ocean-bound waste plastics . “ But to get there , we have to change the system we currently have in place .”
Yet achieving this massive transformation requires wholesale change in how businesses operate , and companies must work both to reduce plastic use and to create new supply chains that divert plastics away from the environment and into new products . HP has been a leader in this effort : Since 2016 , the company has sourced more than 1.7 million pounds of ocean-bound plastics for use in its products , and it has pledged to cut single-use plastic packaging 75 % by 2025 .
“ HP is not only focused on plastics recycling but also eliminating plastics wherever possible ,” says Dean Miller , Program Manager for Recycling Innovation at HP , adding that the company is incorporating modularity and repairability across many parts of its product portfolio .
CREATING DEMAND FOR RECYCLED PLASTICS Using more recycled plastic in products requires a quality source — not as straightforward as you might think , given the sheer volume of waste plastic available . In Haiti , HP has helped divert more than 60 million plastic bottles from waterways and oceans by working with local organizations to create a market for recycled
8 million metric tons
Estimated amount of plastic that ends up in oceans every year
SOURCE : SCIENCE
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