IMPACT:

DishZero was developed to address the increasing concern surrounding the use of single use waste. Current literature concludes that single use waste, and specifically single use plastics and Styrofoam, causes environmental harm in a multitude of ways including but not limited to: high GHG emissions associated with the production and usage of these items, land pollution, and microplastic toxicity (Chen et al., 2021).

 

Some of the most wasteful SUPs are those associated with dining and food services. These single-use plastics possess a very short lifecycle that is completed either by incineration or in landfills – both amounting to the loss of valuable, limited natural resources.  SUPs are a major contributor to global waste and when these products end up in a landfill or as litter in the general environment, they pose a serious threat to wildlife as they accumulate in water and soil ecosystems (Boucher et al., 2019; Law et al., 2010; Briassoulis et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2018a, 2018b).