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 | | Protesters near the Capitol building in Washington.Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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The environmental justice wake-up call |
“I can’t breathe” was one of the last things George Floyd said before he was killed in police custody in Minneapolis. The words have become a rallying cry for protesters demanding accountability. Increasingly, they’ve also been taken up by environmental activists seeking to address the fact that communities of color carry a disproportionate burden of the country’s air pollution and other environmental hazards. |
Lawmakers appear to be paying attention. When President Trump moved this month to weaken environmental rules for new infrastructure projects, Democratic leaders issued statements criticizing the move as an attack on people of color, who are overwhelmingly more likely to live near industrial sites. Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader from New York, said in a statement that the president’s executive order made clear “his total disregard for those speaking out and fighting for racial justice and a sustainable environment.” |
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is running for president, is also tying environmental degradation to injustices faced by poor people and communities of color. Recently, he discussed the link between asthma cases and growing up around smokestacks and refineries. |
“They tend to be in places where people, in fact, have no option but to live there,” Mr. Biden said. “There’s so much we can do.” |
Activists who have worked for decades on environmental justice said they were pleased to see the issue gaining attention in Washington. But they also said it’s important for policymakers to understand that addressing environmental vulnerability is not distinct from problems of police brutality, health disparities or other racial inequities. |
“We’re talking about racial inequities and other injustices across the spectrum,” said Heather McTeer Toney, the national field director for Moms Clean Air Force. “We’re not just talking about one thing, which is why it’s a special moment.” |
She also called this moment a wake-up call for climate advocacy groups, which are still overwhelmingly white, to learn to help communities of color achieve their environmental and energy goals rather than simply encouraging those communities to join broader national campaigns. |
Jacqueline Patterson, senior director of the climate justice program at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she was wary that political attention on these issues might wane. But, she said, the last few weeks of protests have shown front-line communities that they can demand better from Washington. |
“There has been a level of opening up of imagination in terms of what we can push for that won’t necessarily retract,” Ms. Patterson said. “The willingness of other folks to bend will retract, but we will continue to push forward,” she said. “That gives me hope.” |
 | | Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Shutterstock |
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For our family, one particularly visible side effect of the pandemic has been cardboard. Every week, the boxes that bring us food, baby supplies and other necessities pile up by the backdoor. Every weekend, we tackle the teetering tower and the cycle starts anew. |
I can’t help but feel guilty about all that cardboard. But should I? |
The answer is complicated. There’s no question that the pandemic has caused a surge in online shopping and its attendant impacts, including cardboard use, said Miguel Jaller, who studies transportation and logistics at the University of California, Davis. Producing a single box made from two pounds of cardboard releases 483 grams of carbon dioxide, about the same as driving a mile, according to the Corrugated Packaging Alliance. |
At the same time, some cities temporarily halted recycling programs at the beginning of the outbreak to protect municipal workers. Even before that, many were still reeling from China’s 2018 decision to stop accepting recycled material from abroad. |
But that’s not the whole story. The surge in e-commerce has also been offset by a drop in sales from brick-and-mortar stores, which normally dominate the cardboard market. |
“It’s purely a distribution and supply-chain shift that’s happening,” said Rachel Kenyon, senior vice president at the Fibre Box Association, a trade group. Aside from a bump in March as grocers struggled to stock their shelves, she said, overall demand for cardboard has remained unchanged. |
The same logic applies in our homes. While ordering more stuff online has environmental costs, staying home reduces our negative impacts in other ways. |
The pandemic may even reduce certain impacts of e-commerce, Dr. Jaller said. Fewer cars on the road mean delivery trucks spend less time battling traffic and searching for parking. And suppliers like Amazon have reduced rush orders, allowing them to maximize delivery efficiency. Dr. Jaller said he suspected that per-package emissions have actually decreased even as the sector has grown. |
It’s impossible to say whether this trend will persist after states reopen. Dr. Jaller said many customers may continue to opt for grocery delivery now that they’ve experienced the convenience. Shuttered retail chains and malls could also push consumers online. And that prospect has the cardboard industry worried. |
On average, corrugated cardboard contains 50 percent recycled material, Ms. Kenyon said, and most of that material is collected from stores. If they close, manufacturers will have to rely on consumers to supply cardboard for recycling. |
However, only half of residents in the United States have easy access to curbside recycling, said Dylan de Thomas, a vice president at the Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit group. And those that do often don’t take full advantage. |
So, perhaps the best thing you can do to assuage your pandemic cardboard guilt is to recycle. Pickup has resumed in most places, Mr. de Thomas said, and domestic demand is as high as ever. He said consumers should “have a lot of confidence that their material is getting recycled, and getting recycled here in the U.S.” |
Last week’s newsletter misstated the position of Cassandra Thiel at NYU Langone Health. She is an assistant professor in the departments of population health and ophthalmology who focuses on hospital design and medical technologies, not an ophthalmologist. |
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