Covid Trash Hits the Dumps
By Jeffrey McBride, National Practice Director, Environmental
It’s been nearly 24 months since the start of the pandemic, and face masks, plastic gloves, and single-use COVID tests have become a part of our daily life. Our kids are masked more hours of the day than not. Even our daily commutes, whether by train or plane, are spent behind a mask.
As the Biden administration’s N95 mask initiative is expected to take effect mid-February, nearly 500 million more masks will become available in addition to hundreds of millions of testing kits. But after those items are used, where are these potentially hazardous and contaminated plastic, latex, and cloth materials ending up?
Reports indicate that more than eight million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste has been generated globally. Read that again: eight million tons. The unprecedented volume of personal protective equipment (PPE) waste (from both the medical community and now the public) isn’t something anyone considered during the early days of the pandemic, or something most consider now. It should be. Micro- and nano-plastics, like those found in discarded masks, are clogging storm drains and polluting our waterways. And as most organizations are now requiring all workers to be masked, we are facing a much larger and more permanent environmental impact problem than anticipated.
Non-medical industries like construction, manufacturing, painting, food processing, etc., have a long history of PPE use. However, prior to 2020, those single-use items were deemed nonhazardous solid waste and discarded with general trash. They were not considered infectious waste and incinerated. Does this process need to change? Are these masks now considered medical or biohazardous waste because there could be traces of the virus? Can or should they be recycled? If employees and the public are tested regularly, what does that look like in terms of environmental impact? The answers to these questions are often found in state regulations, but in some areas local laws take precedence. Proper use, handling, and disposal of PPE and testing equipment can be confusing and are substantially adding to the global problem of non-recyclable plastics.
This is a very real wake-up call for the environmental compliance industry and our pre-pandemic waste management and infrastructure plans. Global landfill space is already a constant issue, and as the population increases, so does the waste. Every year 2.12 billion tons of waste are dumped globally, and the pandemic has only added to this problem. Managing waste responsibly is a huge undertaking that is never going to end.
Incorporating new policies and practices into current environmental compliance plans will avoid the negative long-term impact of mismanaged PPE. Complying with waste regulations, especially within rapid-growth industries, just isn’t enough anymore. Waste management plans should be revised or developed specifically addressing the management of virus-spreading PPE and testing supplies. Serious thought must be given to segregation, recycling, and minimization to shrink environmental footprints. Reduction of wastes should be at the top of today’s environmental business resiliency models.
In our upcoming series Environmental Business Resiliency Strategies, we’ll focus on just that.
