It is a scourge that strikes streets, beaches or rivers.
We saw it coming, but we tried very weakly to prevent it.
Composed of plastic fibers, in particular polypropylene, a very polluting material that takes hundreds of years to decompose, the single-use mask lies everywhere on the ground.
The world consumes colossal amounts of them: the UN estimates that since the start of the pandemic their production has multiplied by 200 and according to the American Chemical Society, at least 129 billion masks are used each month in the world, more than 4 billion a day.
A study published in the journal
Heliyon
estimates the number of masks discarded every day at 3.4 billion.
"The Covid-19 will reverse the dynamics of the global fight waged for years to reduce pollution by plastic waste"
, note its authors.
Read also:
Masks, gloves ... How are hazardous waste linked to the epidemic managed
Last year, more than 1.5 billion masks ended up in the oceans according to the NGO OceansAsia, while the Ocean Conservancy network collected nearly
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