Covid-19 ‘has created 8.4 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste’

Name: Indonesia’s Covid-19 medical waste swamps country’s rubbish mountains
Uploaded: 2021-11-09T22:00:20.000Z
Duration: 1 min 43 s
Description: Indonesia’s Covid-19 medical waste swamps country’s rubbish mountains

Waste from hospitals, PPE, testing and related shopping worsens ‘already out-of-control global plastic waste problem’, scientists say

Asia is the biggest source of plastic waste reaching the environment, with a proportion exceeding its share of infections, study finds

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Masks and other medical products have often ended up in the oceans. Photo: Shutterstock

Holly Chik

Published: 6:00am, 10 Nov 2021

The world had generated about 8.4 million tonnes of “mismanaged” plastic waste from the pandemic as of late August, with nearly 26,000 tonnes entering oceans, according to a study that highlights the problem of dealing with medical waste in Covid-19 epicentres.

Researchers estimated that 87 per cent of the extra mismanaged plastic waste came from hospitals, based on the number of coronavirus inpatients and the typical amount of medical waste generated per person for 193 countries. Personal protective equipment (PPE) use by individuals contributed 8 per cent, packaging 5 per cent and test kits 0.3 per cent.

As of August 23, Asia had reported 31 per cent of the global Covid-19 cases yet generated 46 per cent of the extra plastic waste that ended up in the environment, compared with North America’s 22 per cent of infections and only 6 per cent of the extra waste.

“This reflects the lower treatment level of medical waste in many developing countries, such as India, Brazil and China, compared with developed countries with large numbers of cases in North America and Europe, for example, the United States and Spain,” the researchers said.

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Indonesia’s Covid-19 medical waste swamps country’s rubbish mountains

“The mismanaged plastic waste generated from individual PPE [including face masks, gloves and face shields] is even more skewed towards Asia because of the large mask-wearing population.”

They said Asia also produced the greatest amount of waste from pandemic-era online shopping packaging.

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