Personal protective equipment is made of plastic and cannot be recycled. Now it can be seen everywhere on the earth, including the ocean. The solution is not complicated: throw them away.

You go for a walk every day. You see a mask on the ground. Few people want to touch something that protects someone’s breath that may be carrying the virus. So it's there until it's blown away-this basic problem is rapidly changing the landscape around the world, from grocery store parking lots to beaches on uninhabited islands.

We have a vaccine against COVID-19 in record time. It turns out that rubbish during the pandemic frustratingly ignores solutions.

A year ago, the idea that disposable masks, gloves and wipes could become global environmental pollutants was not a pressing issue. Personal protective equipment, or PPE for short, is seen as a necessary condition to prevent the spread of COVID-19. No one imagined how much it would take such a long time. Then production exploded-now garbage is inevitable.

Since then, scientists have established a library of more than 40 studies that have documented the use and disposal of PPE and simulated conditions on a global scale. The unknown numbers now tell the story.

65 billion gloves are used every month worldwide. The number of masks is almost twice this number-129 billion per month. This is equivalent to using 3 million masks per minute.

Another study reported that 3.4 billion masks or face masks are discarded every day. It is estimated that 1.8 billion masks will be discarded every day in Asia, the highest discarded volume of any continent in the world. China is the most populous country in the world (1.4 billion), discarding nearly 702 million masks every day.

All of these can be called disposables because they are cheap enough to be used once and then thrown away. But the problem is: they have not actually disappeared.

Face masks, gloves, and wet wipes are made of a variety of plastic fibers, mainly polypropylene. They will remain in the environment for decades or even hundreds of years, decomposing into smaller and smaller microplastics and nanoplastics. According to a study in the "Environmental Progress" magazine, a mask can release up to 173,000 microfibers into the ocean every day.

"They won't go anywhere," said Nicholas Mallos, who oversees the Marine Conservation Society's marine litter project.

Masks and gloves scattered on the ground were blown into rivers and streams like tumbleweed, and then they were carried into the sea. Scientists have documented their presence on South American beaches, the mouth of the Jakarta Bay, the coasts of Bangladesh, Kenya, and the uninhabited Hong Kong Soko Islands. Discarded personal protective equipment blocked the street drain from New York City to Nairobi and blocked machines in the municipal sewage system in Vancouver, British Columbia.

These things are affecting animals. This innovative common cootbird, a one-foot-high white-faced bird, was observed in the Netherlands, wearing a mask to build a nest-assuming that its large and thin feet will not be entangled in the mask ring. According to a study in the journal Animal Biology, this has happened to swans, seagulls, peregrine falcons, and songbirds, and it is sometimes fatal.

In most municipal systems, masks, gloves and wipes are not recyclable and should not be added to any household recycling bins. Masks can contain a mixture of paper and polymers, including polypropylene and polyester, which cannot be separated into a pure single material stream for recycling. They are also too small and will get trapped in the recycling machine and cause malfunctions. (PPE used in medical facilities is treated as hazardous medical waste.)

Joana Prata, an environmental health researcher at the University of Porto in Portugal and lead author of the study on the impact of the pandemic on plastics, pointed out that citizens need clear information about the use and disposal of PPE. "This includes proper disposal as mixed waste in airtight leak-proof bags," she wrote.

The problems caused by PPE waste have presented a complicated period in the effort to curb plastic waste. It is estimated that the amount of plastic waste accumulated in the ocean will triple in the next 20 years, and there is no real solution yet. If every company abides by its promise to use more recycled plastics, this shift will reduce the projected triple by 7%.

As consumers buy more takeaway food, and because of concerns that reusable items will spread the virus, the ban on single-use plastic products (including shopping bags) has been suspended, and the output of single-use packaging has also increased. At the same time, a third of the recycling companies in the United States have been partially or completely closed due in part to cuts in the cash-strapped municipal budget.

* Wear a washable cloth mask as much as possible.

* Put the used PPE into a plastic bag, seal it and put it in the trash can.

As masks and gloves became more and more obvious, the Marine Conservation Association, a non-profit organization advocating marine protection, began to evaluate the prevalence of PPE litter around the world last summer. The organization has added PPE to its mobile application, allowing volunteers to record junk items and upload them to the organization's website. In a global survey of volunteers involved in beach cleanups in the summer of 2020, 107,219 pieces of personal protective equipment rubbish were recorded, although the leaders of the organization concluded that this number may be "seriously underestimated."

A better measure may come from the volunteers themselves; 94% of people reported that they often see masks, gloves, and other PPE trash in their communities, while half said they see PPE trash every day. 40% of people reported seeing PPE garbage in streams, rivers and oceans.

"The problem is big; there is nothing to hide," Malos said. "But remember, this is on top of the existing global plastic waste crisis. This is a public health issue, and it is also a marine health issue."

The organization has been urging the phasing out of redundant and unnecessary plastic packaging. Since the pandemic, in order to improve take-out food packaging, it has been replaced with other packaging materials, such as cardboard, which have a different impact when discarded than plastic packaging.

Within a few days after the pandemic was announced in March last year, Justine Ammendolia, a marine researcher in Toronto and a grantee of the National Geographic Society, noticed that the number of masks and gloves increased during her daily walks. More and more. She also noticed that with the spread of PPE throughout the city, any government or other organization lacks structured monitoring of PPE.

In order to identify hot spots, Amendoria himself recorded masks, gloves and wipes at six locations, including two grocery store parking lots, a hospital area, two residential areas and a leisure trail. Last summer, she recorded 1,306 records in five weeks. Not surprisingly, the grocery parking lot is the most, followed by the hospital area.

"This is not the largest amount of plastic in the world," she said, "but the thing is, after this incident, we will change, just like our relationship with disposability. This has caused people to be concerned about the waste generated. The amount of attention. This is the starting point of the dialogue."

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