Day: January 15, 2021

Show Only ...
Maps - Photos - Videos

Online shopping has shifted recycling responsibilities to consumers – The Verge

|

Online shopping has shifted recycling responsibilities to consumers – The Verge

The fate of cardboard boxes in the US rests in the hands of consumers more than it ever has been before. In the past, brick-and-mortar retailers handled much of the leftover packaging from shipments. Malls and grocery stores usually send big bales of used but relatively clean cardboard to recycling programs so that they can be made into new boxes. Now, the rise of e-commerce, which started before the pandemic, has shifted more responsibility onto shoppers to properly dispose of boxes so that they can be recycled. Boxes are piling up on residential curbsides instead of at retail stores.

Coronavirus Updates : NPR

|

Life Expectancy In U.S. Shortened By Pandemic, Study Concludes : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

The coronavirus pandemic appears to have shortened the average life expectancy in the United States, according to new research, and the impact is most dire for racial and ethnic minorities.

The deaths caused by COVI-19 have reduced overall life expectancy by 1.13 years, according to the analysis by researchers at the University of Southern California and Princeton University.

That would be the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in the past 40 years and cut U.S. life expectancy to 77.48 years — the lowest it's been since 2003, the researchers say.

"This impact is about 10 times as large as the worrisome annual decreases several years ago that were attributed largely to drug overdoses, other external causes, and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases," the researchers write in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The reduction in life expectancy is estimated to be even greater among racial and ethnic minorities. Life expectancy is estimated to fall by 2.10 years among Blacks and 3.05 years among Latinos. The decline would be 0.68 years among whites.