Impact of Pandemic-associated waste is far reaching and will continue to affect our oceans and landfill for years to come.
During the lockdowns, the woke climate-catastrophists banged on with fervour about the reduction of pollution and increase in wilderness walking the abandoned streets, reported in a sly subliminal attempt to remind us humans of how detrimental we are to nature and the guilt-ridden messaging of seeing what happens with regeneration in just a few short months, and how the lockdown of people is beneficial for the earth.
What wasn't being reported was the disaster of the vast global pollution and waste generated by the pandemic. This waste was produced in overdrive, as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and global governments, and monitored by the Rockefeller-owned World Bank and subsidiary World Integrated Trade Solution which partners with the Rockefeller-owned United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Most of the pollution and waste was generated by single-use personal protective equipment (PPE) — the masks, gloves, suits, gowns and shields used to protect people, COVID station testers and medical staff from the virus. As well as PCR/RAT tests, vials, vaccine syringes, safety data sheets (that no-one read), alcohol swabs and packaging.
Other pollutants included everything from the massive freezers used to keep vaccines cold, to the trucks and airplanes needed to get the jabs out to patients, to the trillions of litres of chemical based sanitizers, sanitizer bottles and wipes. Add to that perspex shields at businesses, social distance stickers and signs, all of which become waste.
Over 8 Billion people inhabit the planet, and only a small percentage avoided the constant rotational interaction with these throwaway products, over what is running into its third year.
Just How Big is this Problem?
Whales, fish, seabirds, turtles and many other animals are eating the plastic and dying en masse. There are many studies in process exploring the relationship between human health problems and consuming fish that contain microplastics (bottles and other single-use items that have broken down). Oceanic ecosystems around the world have been ravaged by plastic waste. COVID-19 triggered an estimated global use of 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves every month (Scientific American).
In the Western world, much of the waste ends up either in landfills (in North America) or incinerated (in Europe), and a small amount—10 percent on average—gets recycled.
Plastic waste from the COVID-19 pandemic weighing 25,900 tonnes, equivalent to more than 2,000 double decker buses leaked into the ocean, from 2020-2021, according to a report by The Guardian. Improper disposal of just 1% of face masks translates to more than 10 million items, weighing 30,000 to 40,000 kg.
Wuhan, the COVID-19 epicentre of China, experienced a massive increase of medical waste from between 40 and 50 tonnes per day before the outbreak, to about 247 tons on 1 March 2020. Cities such as Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, and Bangkok experienced similar increases, producing 154 to 280 tonnes more medical waste per day than before the pandemic.
Science.org
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The University of Portsmouth's Keiron Roberts and colleagues compared the growth of mask litter in 11 different countries and found a big increase occurred between March to October 2020.
"There was this massive jump, almost 9,000 per cent jump. According to Tom Rainey, a chemical engineer at QUT's Centre for a Waste-Free World, most disposable face masks filters are made of meltblown polypropylene — a type of non-woven plastic fabric that does not biodegrade.
The global disposable face mask market size was valued at USD 38.9 billion in 2021. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 89.0 million medical masks were required each month in response to COVID-19.
Conscious Awareness of the environmental effects by the powers that be.
Most of the 1.5 billion medical items distributed by the UN in the first months of the pandemic ended up as rubbish, equivalent to the weight of 262,000 jumbo jets - 160 metric tons of COVID PPE per day during the crisis in Bangkok alone.
Once in the environment, littered items can continue to have the impacts mentioned above, with the addition of becoming vectors for other pathogens and pollutants. Chemical, physical and biological weathering will break the littered items down from macro-plastics (>5 mm) into micro-plastics (<0.5 mm) and nano-plastics (<100 nm) that have the potential to enter the lower food chain and have toxicological effects including the leaching of metals.
The COVID vaccine market monitored by UNICEF states over 13.6 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been secured—enough to cover the global population. ADD this waste to the rest of the pandemic-mandated PPE waste, and see through the lens of what environmental catastrophe they have created.
The World Bank Tariff keeps trade stats on COVID PPE and materials, and you can find in-depth statistics via this link. The WHO provides a full list of COVID medical supplies distributed for the pandemic via this link. It is not hard to do the math and determine the prospective size of the COVID pollution from single use supplies.
It appears the producers, the WHO and World Integrated Trade System (WITS) know something that we don't, that the need for masks in 2030 will be almost equal to the amount distributed in 2021. On what basis are they predicting this need?
Great reporting, thanks!