Helen Lowman looks at litter a lot. It’s her job. But while walking her dog in Westport, Connecticut, in March, she noticed an alarming trend. First she passed some dirty wipes on the ground. Then there were gloves. And finally a mask. Four months later, she said the litter of personal protective gear has only gotten worse.
As more people wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, more personal protective equipment, or PPE, has been found as litter around the world.
The issue has prompted environmental organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, to sound the alarm. Some local governments, like Suffolk County in New York, have instituted fines for littering involving masks and gloves, and police departments, like the one in Swampscott, Massachusetts, have warned that improperly discarding PPE is a crime.
“This pandemic is causing the face of litter to change,” said Lowman, chief executive of Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit group that organizes cleanups. “We’re seeing a real shift in what is in the litter stream.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that the general public wear reusable cloth face coverings, but disposable masks are readily available; a pack of 50 can be purchased for around $30.
Experts say the risk of catching coronavirus from a discarded mask is minimal, but the litter is causing concern for other reasons:
Used masks and gloves, which cannot be recycled, pose a problem for the environment.
Disposable masks and gloves aren’t necessarily better or worse than any other kind of litter, according to experts.
Like other waste, a mask could be mistaken for food by wildlife. Or a heavy rain could wash it into a storm drain or a river and eventually the ocean, posing a risk for marine ecosystems.
“It’s quite alarming where these are ending up,” said Gary Stokes, founder of OceansAsia, a marine conservation group. “It’s not just the beaches. We’re getting them out in nature, but also downtown; you see them on the streets, in the gutter, on public transport.”
A University College London study found that if everyone in the United Kingdom wore a new disposable mask every day for a year, it would result in 66,000 metric tons of plastic waste, plus 57,000 metric tons of packaging.