One thing COVID-19 has changed: Our relationship with paper

Who can forget the great toilet paper shortage of 2020? What about all of the pizza you ordered? And what did you do with all of the shipping boxes mailed to your home? 

This week, "The Debrief with Major Garrett" podcast marks the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, albeit not with a year-from-hell retrospective. Instead, we decided to explore one relationship to a thing that could embody how the pandemic has changed our habits — and led us back to some old ones. 

That object is paper: We're using less of it at work and far more of it at home. Our screen-weary eyes long for printed books and puzzles. 

We're writing more letters. Many of us voted at home in 2020 with mail-in ballots. Those Amazon boxes are piling up, and our consumption of disinfectant wipes and paper towels has skyrocketed. 

Listen to this week's episode wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on Twitter!

This week, Major welcomed the following guests to the podcast to mark the year of pandemic and paper:

• Paul Fowler, executive director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• Karen Hayes,  co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee
• Patrick Lindner, chief innovation officer for WestRock  
• Frank Warren, founder of Post Secret
• Terry Webber, executive director of packaging at the American Forest and Paper Association
• Gabi Young, president of the Diaper Bank of Central Arizona

Highlights from this week's episode:

• "We're getting back to simpler things that we can believe in and trust, and I think writing and paper and that kind of communication is part of it," said Frank Warren, the founder of Post Secret, a growing collection over of over a million postcards mailed to him anonymously.
• Karen Hayes, the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, told Major that her business survived 2020 because of online sales. "People really wanted something that would give them comfort and something they could hold," Hayes said.
• "Think about your everyday life and the number of encounters that you have and have with paper," said Paul Fowler, the executive director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology, before rattling off examples like filters to make coffee and labels on prescription bottles. "So the idea that paper is dying, I think is a real sort of misconception."