Addressing one threat is creating another

Quebec should do more to help schools with disposal of masks, say Shirley Barnea and Gal Barnea.

On Jan. 6, like many other high school students, we anxiously listened to Premier François Legault's news conference. When the announcement was made that all high school students and teachers would be required to wear a disposable mask while at school, we immediately thought of the mountains of waste that would be created.

When we returned to school, our concerns became reality as we witnessed our tiny school of 250 students burn through 2,000 disposable masks in a mere five days. The announcement that the government would be reimbursing schools for the cost of recycling the masks provided little consolation. It was a step in the right direction, but we knew that it would most certainly not be enough.

The procedural masks in question are made of a form of plastic. As much as this material is practical and versatile, it is responsible for a huge amount of damage, from choking marine life to leaching toxic chemicals to clogging up our landfills. The terrifying quantities of disposable masks worn throughout this pandemic are a significant source of pollution, adding to the dire plastic crisis.

In a trash cleanup this past October executed by the New York-based environmental group Save the River, overwhelming amounts of plastic pollution were found in the Upper St. Lawrence River. Nothing is keeping the millions of masks from continuing downstream, resulting in devastating consequences.

Masks can be mistaken for food and ingested by wildlife, causing their already fragile populations to decline and destabilizing their entire ecosystems. Along with these collapsing communities, our oxygen supplies diminish, as more than half of the oxygen that we breathe is produced by ocean plants. Like other plastics,

This tremendous amount of waste is entirely the government's responsibility.

masks remain in our environment forever, and never biodegrade. Instead, they break down into tiny pieces called microplastics that are practically impossible to clean up and find their way into everything, even our water sources and the very food we eat.

Now, over half a million masks are being used by high school students and staff every day.

This tremendous amount of waste is entirely the government's responsibility. It ordered schools to use disposable masks, and therefore it should be the one cleaning up the mess. The government's current approach does exactly the opposite, and pushes the responsibility onto the schools.

Other than covering the cost, the government provides no further assistance for schools to recycle their masks. Schools are left to find a suitable place to send their masks, educate the community, keep track of all of the logistics, and organize a system of collecting and sending their masks to a recycling plant, while keeping everything sanitary. Keeping in mind that schools are already overwhelmed with new safety measures, it is likely that many schools will not put in the extra effort to recycle their masks.

Nevertheless, these masks have an enormous environmental footprint, and therefore the government must do everything that it can in order to mitigate the impact of the measure that it is imposing. This means taking the matter of collecting and recycling the tens of millions of face masks that it is distributing to schools into its own hands.

A centralized collection and recycling system put in place by the government would ensure that procedural masks do not end up littering and harming our environment, and take a burden off of already overwhelmed school systems.

We are in the midst of a global pandemic, but while we must address it, we cannot ignore other crises. The use of procedural masks may slow the spread of COVID-19, but we need to address its environmental impacts. The distribution of disposable masks in schools threatens to produce massive amounts of waste. It is the government's responsibility to minimize it. Shirley Barnea (Grade 11) and Gal Barnea (Grade 8) are climate activists and students at St. George's School of Montreal.

LISE RAVARY RETURNS SOON.