From all the bottled water that more people are consuming to the personal protective equipment (PPEs) like masks and gloves, Covid-19 has increased the consumption of plastic around the world.
Governments have been enforcing their people to wear various PPEs while scuttling to produce and store more.
While these are all necessary concessions as the world continues to battle with the global pandemic, environmentalists worry about the effect that all this plastic waste will have on our already polluted oceans.
Even in Europe and North America where environmental standards are higher than in developing countries, environmental concerns over plastic have mostly been tabled away in the face of a pandemic. The problem is that humans have yet to discover an effective treatment method for plastic.
In an interview with CNN, a spokesperson for a NGO that works on conserving the ocean said that he was concerned about the rollbacks in various regulations that he has witnessed.point 266 |
He said that it took a long time and a lot of resources to implement those rules, and feared that some firms may exploit the pandemic to get rid of those regulations for good.point 142 | 1
Already, PPEs and the effects that they may have on the environment have started to surface all over the globe. In the streets of some of the world’s busiest cities, masks and gloves can easily be found in the streets.
Should there be a downpour, these masks will be sucked into the sewers, which then connects to the rivers and oceans. Without proper disposal, the PPEs and additional plastic that we are using up will add to the already immense amount of trash that humans have been dumping into the Earth’s waters.
Moreover, increased production of plastic yields proportional increases in the greenhouse gases that are emitted. Studies show that the amount of greenhouses emitted during production of plastic is equal to that emitted by all modes of transportation.
There are peculiar risks that PPEs may present to the marine wildlife. Because of their appearance and shape, marine biologists worry that creatures will mistake PPEs for jellyfish and consequently suffocate. This is known to be one of the leading causes of death for sea turtles.
A new model of PPEs that may be reusable and more sustainable are said to be under development. We hope that we can overcome both the pandemic and a potential post-pandemic pollution.
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