COVID-19 started as a health crisis but quickly morphed into a plastic waste crisis. From PPEs to online deliveries of food and goods, our homes and communities are being flooded with single-use plastics. The rise of disposable plastics in food service is largely due to the misinformation that disposable plastics offer more protection against COVID-19. Many cities and states even rolled back plastic bag bans and started to encourage disposable foodware.  

As restaurants move toward reopening, many health experts are saying plastic food packaging doesn’t provide any better protection against COVID-19 - in fact, it presents significant risk to human health. Leading up to World Health Day on April 7, UPSTREAM held a media briefing with expert panelists, Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, public health policy and environmental health pioneer and author of Sicker, Fatter, Poorer, and Shanna H. Swan, PhD, MS, one of the world’s leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists and author of Count Down. They discussed another potential global health crisis, this one brought about by plastic and the toxic chemicals in our food packaging.

In this media briefing, you’ll learn more about the health risks of plastics and food packaging and suggested solutions based on research provided by the UNWRAPPED Project – a partnership between UPSTREAM, GAIA, and Zero Waste Europe. You’ll also learn more about how toxic chemicals in single-use food packaging are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer, even interfering with our ability to have children. 

Miriam Gordon, UPSTREAM’s Policy Director, also focuses on the role of reusable foodware in saving businesses money and its relative safety both during the pandemic and in terms of the toxic chemicals threat. She has tracked how the rise in plastics during the pandemic was fueled by a false narrative that plastic makes us safer and discusses how reusables are safer for consumers and better for businesses’ bottom line.

The live discussion originally aired on April 6, 2021 and was moderated by Brooking Gatewood, host of UPSTREAM’s Indisposable Podcast. You can watch the full recording on our YouTube channel here.  

Take Action Now

Show your support: add your name to our statement asking our beloved restaurants to reopen with nontoxic reuse.

Ask lawmakers to act now:  to protect public health by signing our Declaration of Concern. 

Resources mentioned during this livestream:

The UNWRAPPED Project is a partnership project between UPSTREAM, GAIA and Zero Waste Europe which aims to raise awareness across the globe about the human health risks posed by plastics and food packaging materials and chemicals.

Food Packaging and Human Health Fact Sheet 

The Disproportionate Impacts of Chemicals in Food Packaging

A new report of interest:

Are bioplastics and plant-based materials safer than conventional plastics?

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For any media inquiries, contact: Vanessa Tiongson, vanessa@upstreamsolutions.org