The Covid era has left everything in a blur: when will schools re-open? When will we go back to normal? What impact does the pandemic have on the US economy? Naturally, there are going to be a lot of questions, with one of the main ones being: can face masks be recycled?
Disappointing as it may be, the answer to that is no. Although surgical masks look like they are made out of a recyclable material, they have already been contaminated with contact with the outside world, and may potentially carry health risks to recycling workers. "There is the fear that PPE exposed to COVID-19 could infect the front-line waste management workers who may not be properly outfitted or take the necessary precautions to handle potentially hazardous waste," explains Porter. Another reason, this time unrelated to Covid, why it is generally ill-advised to recycle surgical masks and latex gloves as they may clog the machinery that sorts materials.
Because of this, the World Health Organization recommends throwing single-use masks and gloves into the garbage bin immediately after using. This sounds like an environmental nightmare, and frankly, it is. While there are no stats for the US yet, according to one estimate, in the UK, if everyone used a disposable mask each day for a year, it would generate a whopping 66,000 metric tons of contaminated waste and 57,000 metric tons of plastic packaging waste! During a 14-week period in 2020, Taiwan used roughly 1.3 billion surgical masks! And to top it all off, if the global population uses 1 face mask a day, we'd be throwing away 129 billion face masks each month!
Despite these disturbing numbers, we should not lose hope. People are working on finding new uses for old masks and developing biodegradable masks. For example, Abaca, a biodegradable fiber from banana plants, could potentially be a replacement for the material used in surgical masks, and an eco-entrepreneur in India is working to convert face masks into construction bricks.
Although these new environmental breakthroughs are coming, the best that we can do as ordinary citizens is to buy reusable cloth masks, but to be sure to wash them after using. However, there are going to be tradeoffs. It is scientifically proven that cloth masks do not work as well as surgical masks. In 2011, a group of Vietnamese hospital workers was supplied with disposable masks and another was supplied with cloth masks. At the end of the 4-week study period, cloth-mask wearers were 13 times more likely to get sick than disposable mask wearers! In addition to that, cloth-mask wearers also got sick over 3 times the rate than the control group did. However, cloth masks were effective at stopping small particles if they were composed of multiple layers, and it was moreso the frequent reuse and inadequate washing that made cloth masks underperforming in the Vietnamese study. Our goal is to diminish the number of new Covid cases, and it seems that wearing either kind of mask will accomplish that purpose.
References:
Comments