Personal Protective Equipment Disposal for the Future

doi:10.1515/ci-2024-0120

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Personal Protective Equipment Disposal for the Future

Published/Copyright: January 31, 2024

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 46 Issue 1

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has generated tens of thousands of tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE) waste [1]. In 2023, COVID-19 is creeping back into the news cycle as disease rates are increasing in the community in the winter months. Thus, it is likely that PPE will remain part of our daily lives; but the increased use of PPE poses a significant health and environmental challenge for two reasons. First, mask production consumes around 10-30 Wh energy and releases 59 CO₂-eq greenhouse gas to the environment [2, 3]. Second, the majority of PPE and other infectious waste ends up as waste. Disposable masks are plastic products that are produced on a similar scale as plastic bottles. These masks cannot be readily biodegraded or composted, but fragment into smaller plastics (e.g. microplastics) that remain in the environment for hundreds of years. Directives from the World Health Organization (WHO) mandate incineration of medical PPE, leading to a 600% rise of plastic incineration in cities such as Wuhan in China at the height of the pandemic (up to 240 tonnes/day), exceeding the maximum incineration capacity of the country [4]. The recycling of disposable surgical plastic masks within the community is complicated since there is no official guidance on this topic, making it likely the material is disposed of as solid waste.

Hemda Garelick showcasing the posters to students at Angkor University in Cambodia on plastics that are used in PPE.

Maria Neira, Director of Environment, Climate Change and Health at WHO, said that: “COVID-19 has forced the world to reckon with the gaps and neglected aspects of the waste stream and how we produce, use and discard our health care resources, from cradle to grave.”

Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a valuable tool for assessing the environmental impacts associated with all life cycle stages of face masks. For instance, Allison et al., have shown that choosing to wear a reusable mask generates 85% less waste and has 3.5 lower impact on climate change, which is a significant contribution even if less single-use masks are purchased than assumed [5]. Van Straten et al., have undertaken LCA by evaluating data on ~18.000 high quality medical FFP2 face masks which were recycled through steam sterilization between March and July 2020. It was reported that the carbon footprint appears to be 58% lower for face masks which were reused five times after steam sterilization compared to single use (new) face masks [6]. Such information is vital for both policy makers who need to consider circular economy approaches for use of medical products but also for the general public who want to make informed decisions about use of PPE.

This project, entitled “Personal protective equipment disposal for the future” has brought together members from the IUPAC Polymer, Chemistry and the Environment, and the Chemistry and Human Health Divisions, in addition to the Committee on Chemistry Education and Interdivisional Committee on Green Chemistry for Sustainable Development, to tackle this important societal issue. In this project, three posters to date were developed that described the composition of protective face masks and other PPE (e.g. lab coats, gloves) and what polymers they are made from, how they work, and strategies for reducing, recycling, and reusing of common polymers. These posters have been shown across the world (Cambodia, Egypt, France, United Kingdom, Portugal) and are available in multiple languages including English, Arabic, French, Dutch, and Portuguese.

The posters are freely available at the progress tab of the project page https://iupac.org/project/2021-012-2-400/, or you can enquire with the project team. In addition, a quiz has been developed (https://app.wooclap.com/IUPACPLASTICS/questionnaires/64424ebddd4f0ad876b2b21a) where people can test their knowledge on the topic; feel free to have a go! The project team will use the results of the quiz and activities with the posters to develop educational activities that we hope to publish in an upcoming Chemistry Teacher International publication.

Several members of the project team (from right to left: Michael Walter, Tien Quach, Lydia Sosa-Vargas) presenting the PPE posters in the Hague in the Netherlands at the IUPAC World Chemistry Conference 2023

For more information and comments, contact Task Group Chairs Marloes Peeters <marloes.peeters@newcastle.ac.uk> or Michael Walter <Michael.Walter@uncc.edu> https://iupac.org/project/2021-012-2-400/

References:

1. Prata et al., COVID-19 pandemic repercussions on the use and management of plastics, Environ. Sci. Technol. 54, 7760, 2020.10.1021/acs.est.0c02178Search in Google Scholar

2. Selvaranjan et al., Environmental challenges induced by extensive use of face masks during COVID-19: A review and potential solutions, Environ. Challenges, 3, 100039, 2021. 10.1016/j.envc.2021.100039Search in Google Scholar

3. Klemes et al., The energy and environmental footprints of COVID-19 fighting measures- PPE, disinfection, supply chains, Energy, 211, 118701, 2020. 10.1016/j.energy.2020.118701Search in Google Scholar

4. Jiri et al., Minimizing the present and future plastic waste, energy and environmental footprints related to COVID-19, Renew. Sus. Ener. Rev. 127, 109883, 2020. 10.1016/j.rser.2020.109883Search in Google Scholar

5. Allison et al., The impact and effectiveness of the general public wearing masks to reduce the spread of pandemics in the UK: a multidisciplinary comparison of single-use masks versus reusable face masks, UCL Open Eviron. 3, DOI: 10.14324/111.444/ucloe.000022, 2021. 10.14324/111.444/ucloe.000022Search in Google Scholar PubMed PubMed Central

6. Van Straten et al., A life cycle assessment of reprocessing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sci. Rep. 11, 17860, 2021. 10.1038/s41598-021-97188-5Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2024-01-31

Published in Print: 2024-01-01

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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