Letters | Don’t let Covid-19 waste give rise to another crisis: environmental disaster
- Carbon emissions dropped last year but, if we do not consider the impact of the millions of discarded single-use masks, and plastic and other Covid waste we are generating in this pandemic, we will end up in another crisis
You come home, throw away your mask, and will most likely never think about the piece of garbage you threw in the trash ever again. And you will most likely throw away masks again and again because, with the pandemic, masks and other forms of plastic have become a daily hygiene necessity.
With Covid-19 taking centre stage in our lives, it is easy to forget an ongoing crisis, one that may not appear immediately in front of us, but is seeping into our lives with the potential to cause irreversible damage: climate change.
While climate change is not new, it is an issue that many of us push to the back of our minds because the effects are not immediate.
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From macaques to crabs, wildlife face threat of masks discarded during Covid-19 pandemic
Governments across the globe need to begin discussing how to handle the impact of this coronavirus on our ecosystem. And we, as citizens, also need to keep reminding ourselves of the severity of global warming and environmental degradation.