Face-mask litter increasing environmental disaster in Canada, other countries – Study

The full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the environment will take years to fully understand, but a new study from the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. is giving a first look at just how much litter stemmed from the first wave.

Published Thursday in the journal Nature Sustainability, the study “Increased personal protective equipment litter as a result of COVID measures,” compared and analyzed data from the “COVID-19 Government Response Tracker” from Oxford University and the litter collection app “Litterati,” both open-source databases.

Researchers took data from 11 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the U.K., the U.S., the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand – and mapped their policy responses to the pandemic, including things like lockdown severity and mask policies. They then created a “base line” of litter proportions in the 11 study countries from Sept. 2019 through the first six months of the pandemic.

The study found that face mask litter increased 9,000 per cent from March to October 2020, and there was a direct link between national legislation and discarded waste that included masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

“We found that littered masks had an exponential increase from March 2020, resulting in an 84-fold increase by October 2020,” lead researcher Keiron Roberts said in a release. “There is a clear need to ensure that requiring the use of these items is accompanied with education campaigns to limit their release into the environment.”

The U.K. showed the highest overall proportion of masks, gloves and wipes as litter, with masks accounting for five per cent of all litter from August to October 2020, and gloves and wipes accounting for 1.5 per cent.

Source: CTV news