Remember when we were watching David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2, which woke up the world to the disaster that was unfolding with all that plastic in the sea? Attitudes changed and quickly. Supermarkets, for example, cut back the amount of plastics used to wrap products. Speaking for my family, we’ve changed our plastic habit radically. And along comes Covid-19.
Am I the only person who is really worried by one of the consequences of shielding people from the virus, which is single-use products, whether they be by way of PPEs in hospitals, facemasks and the like? It isn’t like a doctor or nurse can wear PPEs in the ward, remove them when they go for a pee and then put them back on again. They throw them away. Almost none of these products are recyclable.
Then add to the total people who are shopping, walking or even cycling wearing masks. I am guessing those masks are bring destroyed after a single use? Actually, I strongly suspect a lot of people are wearing them over again. Indeed, a woman in front of me in the nearly local Co-op this morning removed her gloves in order to pay for her shopping, which included two packets of cigarettes, probably not the best products to by when the country is threatened by a potentially fatal respiratory disease, but that’s another subject. Who knows if she is the exception?
All this stuff has to be destroyed somehow. I’m guessing it might be burned in a contained area so smoke and stuff wouldn’t emerge into the atmosphere, but we don’t know.
Pollution is way down because we’re most of us at home at tech moment. But will the cleaner air be matched by even more plastic in our seas?
