Single-use plastic pollution warning over discarded PPE

FACE masks washed up on beaches, discarded on the street or even carried away by birds have become a symbol of how the coronavirus has disrupted the effort to reduce single-use plastic.

Masks and plastic gloves are not recyclable, meaning they end up either being burned, dumped in landfill sites, or discarded − ultimately ending up in the sea, where they can cause harm to wildlife and ecosystems, and possibly end up in the food chain.

Gary Stokes, a conservationist in Hong Kong, recently witnessed a black kite flying along carrying a mask in its beak.

He has been warning of the risks since February, when his organisation, Oceans Asia, found 70 masks on a 100yard stretch of beach on the Soko Islands.

He said: “It’s just a matter of time before we start seeing wildlife washing up dead. Marine debris was already bad enough and this is just another item we are leaving as a legacy for the next generation.”

Other single-use plastic has also made a comeback during lockdown, as people trapped indoors turn to packaged online deliveries.

The World Health Organisation says that washable, reusable fabric masks are perfectly adequate for the wider population and only front line workers need medical-grade face masks.

However, the number of disposable masks continues to grow.

A study by the Polytechnic University of Turin estimated that Italy alone would need one billion masks and 500 million pairs of gloves every month as the country tries to reboot after lockdown.

“If even only 1 per cent of the masks [in Italy] were disposed of incorrectly and perhaps dispersed in nature, this would result in 10million masks per month in the environment,” the World Wide Fund for Nature said.

Experts also warned that falling oil prices have reduced the demand for recycled plastics as it is cheaper to produce products from scratch.

Dr Eleni Iacovidou, of Brunel University, said. “If we have virgin plastic material being sold cheap, why would producers go and pay recyclers for a small amount of plastic material that is of lower quality and expensive?”