PPE, masks, shields adds to waste crisis
Movement against plastic hit hard due to single-use items
4: The crisis of plastic and biomedical waste is deepening with each Covid case as millions of people use and throw face shields, surgical masks, gloves and PPE suits, once used primarily in hospitals and now an indispensable part of everyday life.
The movement against plastic has taken a battering in the pandemic with dependency on single-use plastic surging and households contributing to the tonnes of biomedical waste being generated, worried experts said ahead of World Environment Day on Saturday.
The detritus of the pandemic can be seen everywhere PPE suits lying discarded behind hospitals and crematoriums, surgical masks and shields being thrown as part of household waste and, of course, sanitiser bottles, gloves and the like found in street corner garbage dumps.
With waste disposal mechanisms less than perfect in India and the plastic footprint becoming larger by the day, concerns on plastic waste choking the planet and worries about safety are mounting.
There has been a general increase and since it is a crisis situation, we are not thinking of plastic but general prevention. The focus is no longer plastic, so that is a problem, Ravi Agarwal, founder director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link, said.
A lot of biomedical waste like masks and PPE kits are also being generated in general homes now. So that is becoming a big problem. These things are finding their way across ecosystems. A lot of these things like masks can be seen on beaches, in coral reefs etc, he added.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India produced 45,308 tonnes of Covid-19 biomedical waste between June 2020 and May 10, 2021, an average daily generation of 132 tonnes of Covid-19 related waste. This is in addition to the 615 tonnes of biomedical waste a day being produced before Covid-19, amounting to a 17 per cent increase in biomedical waste generation solely because of the pandemic.
Besides Covid-related waste from hospitals and homes with positive patients, there is pandemic promoted waste from non-Covid homes, including not just protective gear but also plastic packaging with more and more people using home deliveries for essential and nonessential shopping.
Under the existing waste disposal rules, biomedical waste is segregated into four categories Yellow (highly infectious waste such as human, animal, anatomical, soiled), Red (contaminated recyclable waste generated from disposable items like tubing, bottles tubes, syringes), White (waste sharps, including needles, syringes with fixed needles), and Blue (broken or discarded and contaminated glassware, including medicine vials).
Considered potentially infectious, all Covid waste, irrespective of content, is tagged Yellow and incinerated.
On the face of it, India seems well equipped to handle this extra load of biomedical waste with a national incineration capacity of 800 tonnes a day. But experts said there are other factors that needed to be taken into account.
Like the fact that due to the health crisis, nonCovid biomedical waste generation has also gone up. Secondly, these incinerators are meant for waste that has been segregated.
● India produced 45,308 tonnes of Covid-19 biomedical waste between June 2020 and May 10, 2021, an average daily generation of 132 tonnes of Covid-19 related waste.