There is no doubt that the range of personal protective equipment (PPE) made from plastics has played a crucial role in protecting people during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, we cannot avoid the unprecedented increase of waste of single-use plastics (SUPs) including gloves, protective medical suits, masks, hand sanitizer bottles, takeout plastics, food, and polyethylene goods packages, and medical test kits so on and so forth. The unanticipated occurrence of a pandemic of this scale has resulted in unmanageable levels of biomedical plastic wastes. Single-use surgical and face masks and latex gloves are seen littering the streets and roads, medical facilities, parking lots, dumpsites, beaches, gutters, and shopping carts
The problem is further aggravated by:
- Healthcare providers, health workers first aiders are generally advised not to reuse their personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation, the respirators, surgical and face masks are labeled as “single-use” disposable medical or respiratory protective devices and should be discarded in a “plastic bag” after use and then dumped in the trash (US FDA, 2020a).
- Biohazardous PPE waste generated in homes is getting mixed with Municipal waste in most places ending up in dump yards.
- The boom in packaging plastics uses due to lockdowns another great contributor.
- The progress in strict regulations regarding Single-use plastics is now on the back burner.
One can easily sense the dimension of the problem when one considers the following facts and figures:
- Exacerbation of existing pollution challenge created by 10 million tons of plastics
- Since the outbreak, It is estimated that plastic waste generation hovering around 1.6 million tons/day
- One estimation shows that approximately 3.4 billion single-use facemasks/face shields are discarded daily as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Reversal of the momentum of the years-long global battle to reduce plastic waste pollution.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has created more biomedical waste in the form of waste plastics.
- In China where the COVID-19 was first reported, 23% increase in the amount of medical waste generated and treated (Tang, 2020). Thus, China has witnessed an accumulated 142,000 tonnes of medical wastes.
- Estimates indicate that generation of discarded face masks per day: Asia 1.8 billion followed by Europe – 445 million, Africa- 411 million, Latin America and the Caribbean—380 million, North America – 244 million and Oceania 22 million!
One of the very long-term consequences that need special mention of the Terrestrial Environment issues.
Serious threat to the health of our environments, our global oceans, and marine organisms (Kane et al., 2020; Jambeck et al., 2015). Plastics in our oceans can come from both land-based or marine sources and are mostly categorized into nano plastics (particulate size range between 1 to 1μm), microplastics (MPs) (particulate size range between 1 mm–5 mm), meso plastics (particulate size range between 5 mm–25 mm), and macro plastics (particulate size range >2.5 cm) (Benson and Fred-Ahmadu, 2020; Fred-Ahmadu et al., 2020b; Jeyasanta et al., 2020). Approximately 80% of global ocean plastics arise from land-based sources while about 20% are attributed to marine sources (Li et al., 2016).
What best can be done to reduce plastic pollution post-COVID-19 pandemic:
Raise awareness for the adoption of dynamic waste management strategies targeted at reducing environmental contamination by plastics generated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The urgent needs to adopt stricter waste management strategies aimed at reducing environmental contamination by coronavirus-generated plastics
Follow the recommendation by the US FDA, healthcare providers could implement the use of reusable surgical gowns in place of disposable single-use PPE (US FDA, 2020b).
Additionally, extended use of PPE for multiple patients may be prioritized by healthcare providers which would ultimately lead to a drastic reduction in the amount of plastic waste generated.
As governments are looking to turbo-charge the economy there is an opportunity to rebuild new industries that can innovate new reusable or non-plastic PPEs and Microwave reactor technologies to convert the used PPEs back into monomers which can be used to make the plastics. One Canadian start-up made excellent progress in this area and in the pilot run stage.
To know more, please check Biocrux.
