Stay-at- home orders went into effect in your city and you had no other option but to stay at home and protect yourself and your loved ones from COVID-19.
Your visit to the store was justified as long as you were shopping for necessities like food and water. But what about the other things like clothes, toys and shoes?
Online shopping.
Many began shopping online and/or increased their online shopping due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
“I didn’t want to risk having to go to the store especially, when summer first started that’s when there was a lot of cases surging in the area and I didn’t want to put myself at risk just to buy something that wasn’t 100% necessary,” said Phoenix resident, Diannie Chavez.
Chavez said her online shopping consisted of buying non perishable items, toys for her nephews and such, but would make a trip to the store for groceries.
U.S. consumers spent $2.2 billion on online shopping last week on November 2, which turns out to be a 31% increase, according to data from Adobe Analytics and Digital Commerce 360. On November 3, consumers spent $2 billion “which was a 27% jump year over year”, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
All that spending has led to a 20% increase in recycled material for the City of Phoenix.
“More material has been coming in and a lot of it has to do with more people being at home, working from home,” said Eduardo Rodriguez, operations manager with the City of Phoenix. “You get more trash as well as recyclable material.”
Rodriguez works in the public works solid waste division and said that they noticed a huge increase in cardboard and paper during peak COVID-19.
In the first two months of the year, the City of Phoenix was getting paid an average of $35 a ton for cardboard and $20 a ton for paper said Rodriguez.
But, during peak COVID (April, May, June) cardboard was selling for an average of $103 a ton and the price of paper more than doubled for $51 a ton, according to Rodriguez.
“It’s like the stock market. It goes up and down on the daily,” said Rodriguez. Chavez said her family and her are huge on recycling and have always recycled because they are strong supporters of being “environmentally friendly.”
Chavez did mention that she saw an increase of cardboard being recycled at her house during COVID.
“For example, Amazon almost everything comes either in a cardboard box or bubble wrap bags. Those two were the things I noticed that we recycled more of,” said Chavez. The virus’s emergence in the states had a huge positive impact concerning the recycling industry.
In the City of Phoenix, “From the city’s point of view…we’re getting more value for that commodity, for example on the paper and cardboard, that means that we’re getting more revenue coming into the city,” said Rodriguez.
Phoenix residents like Chavez are encouraging others to take the initiative of recycling to help the planet and our environment.
“We have one Earth and it is up to us to take care of it and recycling is just the first step,” said Chavez.
