How

to stop discarded face masks from polluting the planet

By Laura Parker

Published

April 14, 2021

You’re out for your daily walk. You see a

face mask on the ground. Few want to touch what has shielded someone’s

potentially virus-laden breath. So there it lies until it blows away—and that

elemental problem is rapidly changing the landscape around the world, from

grocery store parking lots to beaches on uninhabited islands.

Vaccines we mastered in record time to

combat COVID-19. Litter in the time of the pandemic, it turns out,

frustratingly defies solution.

A year ago, the idea that disposable face

masks, gloves, and wipes could become global environmental pollutants was not a

pressing concern. Personal protective equipment, PPE for short, was seen as

essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. No one imagined just how much

of it would be needed, for so long. Then production exploded—and now the litter

is inescapable.

In the time since, scientists have built a

library of more than 40 studies that document the use and disposal of PPE and

model what that looks like on a global scale. Numbers not known then tell the

tale now.

Globally, 65 billion gloves are used every

month. The tally for face masks is nearly twice that—129 billion a month. That

translates into 3 million face masks used per minute.

A separate study reports that 3.4 billion

face masks or face shields are discarded every day. Asia is projected to throw

away 1.8 billion face masks daily, the highest quantity of any continent

globally. China, with the world’s largest population (1.4 billion) discards

nearly 702 million face masks daily.

All may be called disposable, because

they’re cheap enough to be used once and then 

thrown away. But here’s the hitch: They don’t actually go away.

Disguised

plastic

Face masks, gloves, and wipes are made

from multiple plastic fibers, primarily polypropylene, that will remain in the

environment for decades, possibly centuries, fragmenting into smaller and

smaller microplastics and nanoplastics. A single face mask can release as many

as 173,000 microfibers per day into the seas, according to a study in Environmental

Advances.

“They’re not going anywhere,” says

Nicholas Mallos, who oversees the Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris program.

Littered face masks and gloves are blown

like tumbleweeds into rivers and streams, which carry them to the seas.

Scientists have recorded their presence on South American beaches, river

outlets in Jakarta Bay, in Bangladesh, on the coast of Kenya, and on the

uninhabited Soko Islands in Hong Kong. Discarded PPE has clogged street drains

from New York City to Nairobi, and has gummed up machinery in the municipal

sewage system in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The stuff is affecting animals. The

innovative common coot, a foot-tall, white-faced bird, has been observed in the

Netherlands carrying face masks away to build nests—assuming its large, gangly

feet don’t become entangled in the mask loops. That has happened, sometimes

fatally, to swans, seagulls, peregrine falcons, and songbirds, according to a

study in Animal Biology.

Face masks, gloves, and wipes are not

recyclable in most municipal systems and should not be added to any household

recycling bin. Masks can contain a mix of paper and polymers, including

polypropylene and polyester, that can’t be separated into pure streams of

single materials for recycling. They are also so small they get caught in

recycling machinery, causing breakdowns. (PPE used in medical facilities is

disposed of as hazardous medical waste.)

Joana Prata, an environmental health

researcher at Portugal’s University of Porto, and lead author of a study on

pandemic repercussions on plastics, noted that citizens need clear information

on use and disposal of PPE. “This includes proper disposal as mixed waste in

closed leak-proof bags,” she wrote.

A

larger global problem gets worse

The problems created by PPE litter have

arrived at a complicated time in the effort to curb plastic waste. The amount

of plastic waste accumulating in the oceans is forecast to triple in the next

20 years, with no real solution on the horizon. If every corporate pledge to

use more recycled plastics were kept, the shift would reduce that projected

tripling by just 7 percent.

The pandemic has also seen increased

production of disposable packaging, as consumers have bought more takeout food,

and as bans of single-use plastics, including shopping bags, were suspended

because of fears that reusables would spread the virus. At the same time, in

part due to cuts in cash-strapped municipal budgets, a third of the recycling

companies in the United States have been partially or completely shuttered.

Assessing

the spread

As face masks and gloves became

increasingly visible, the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for

ocean protections, began last summer to assess the pervasiveness of PPE litter

around the world. The organization added PPE to its mobile app that allows

volunteers to document trash items and upload them to the organization’s

website. In a global survey of volunteers who participated in beach cleanups in

summer 2020, 107,219 individual items of PPE litter were documented, though the

group’s leaders concluded that figure is likely a “vast underestimate.”

A better measure may come from the

volunteers themselves; 94 percent reported seeing face masks, gloves, and other

PPE litter in their communities on a regular basis, while half said they see

PPE litter daily. Forty percent reported seeing PPE litter in streams, rivers,

and oceans.

“The problem is huge; there’s no hiding

that,” Mallos says. “But remember, this is on top of the existing global crisis

of plastic waste. It’s a matter of public health, and also ocean health.”

The group has pressed for phasing out of

redundant and unnecessary plastic packaging, and since the pandemic, for

improvement in takeout food packaging, replacing it with other packaging

materials such as cardboard that don’t have the same impact as plastic

packaging when discarded.

What

can be done?

Within days after the pandemic was

declared last March, Justine Ammendolia, a marine researcher based in Toronto

and a National Geographic Society grantee, noticed face masks and gloves in

increasing numbers as she took her daily walks. She also noticed lack of

structured monitoring of PPE by any governmental or other organization as it

spread throughout the city.

To identify hotspots, Ammendolia herself

documented face masks, gloves, and wipes at six sites, including two grocery

store parking lots, a hospital district, two residential areas, and a

recreational trail. She logged 1,306 items over five weeks last summer. Not

surprisingly, the grocery parking lots had the most, followed by the hospital

district.

“It’s not the biggest amount of plastic in

the world,” she says, “But, the thing is, we’re going to be changed after this

event, as is our relationship with disposability. This raises attention to the

amount of waste being produced.That is the starting point of the conversation.”