As I recently wrote, the fad for banning single-use plastic shopping bags is yet another green scheme gone tits-up. In fact, the ban led to an increase in plastic bags going into landfill. Good one, greens!
As if dumping more, and heavier-grade, plastic into the environment wasn’t enough of a farce, governments around the world have spent the last few years imposing policies that are leading to millions of tonnes more plastic flooding the environment.
An unfortunate but unavoidable fact is that surgical and N95 masks (and personal protective equipment and testing kits) are single-use plastics or, at best, double- or triple-use plastics. Surgical and most respirator masks are made from polypropylene, a synthetic plastic fibre which, like all plastics, is generated from petroleum. While they can and often are used more than once, experts don’t recommend wearing them for more than two or three days.
If you’re wearing a surgical or even an N95 mask more than once, or even more than an hour or so, you’re an idiot. These masks simply aren’t designed for such use. Re-using or over-using them completely defeats even their supposed purpose – protecting against viruses.
Here’s the funny thing, though: even though I’m thoroughly sceptical about the supposed efficacy of such masks (the evidence supporting their mass use in a pandemic is poor to non-existent), on the occasions when I’ve been forced to don one, I dispose of them carefully. I always make certain to snap the ear loops off, for instance. Judging by what I see, I’m one of the few who do. Scungy, tossed-away face masks are blighting the urban landscape in a way that plastic shopping bags never did. The ghastly things bob about in waterways and tangle themselves in trees and bushes.
The 400 million N95 masks that the Biden administration recently began making available to Americans, and the millions of “high quality” masks it is distributing to kids, will get a few days of use at most before going in the trash. From there, many will end up in landfills, where they leach toxic chemicals into groundwater, or be incinerated, releasing carbon dioxide and toxic chemicals. Many others will eventually wind up in rivers and oceans, and make their way into the gullets of sea birds like the Laysan albatross, who mistakenly feed on plastic and give it to their chicks. This compounds an already alarming problem.
Despite the fretting of Western shopping-bag-ban activists, the bulk of plastic in the oceans doesn’t – or didn’t – originate in Western countries. Almost all of it comes from countries in Asia and Africa. One study indicated the some 70 per cent of plastic waste in the Atlantic originated from disposable drink bottles tossed from Chinese ships.
But all that may be changing. Western governments’ obsession with forcing us to wear masks will almost certainly explode our environmental plastic footprint.
Another thing to consider: Like all single-use plastics, masks boost greenhouse gas emissions at every point in their life cycle.
Environmental groups have long recognised that limiting plastic throwaways is the only effective means of reducing their impact. This is why some states and cities have banned plastic bags and straws.
And we’ve seen how that worked out.
Masks cannot be banned like other single-use plastics, of course […] Researchers at Cornell University recently came up with a plan to shred masks and other PPE, then heat those smaller bits to break them down into useful chemicals like ethylene, propylene, propane and butane. To meaningfully reduce plastic waste, this method would need to be implemented by states and countries on a large scale, but this kind of “chemical recycling” has been criticised for causing carbon emissions and releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. It’s also costly.
Grist
There’s an easy solution to all this, of course. Masks can’t be banned –but nanny-states can stop forcing people to wear them.
More significantly, if the Mask Dicks really must signal their virtue, they can do so by ostentatiously demonstrating their commitment to the environment by going mask-less.
Just stop wearing the stupid, useless, environmentally-catastrophic things, you idiots.
But… but.. what about the big, bad ’Rona? Think of the planet! In the unlikely event you actually catch Covid, and the even more unlikely event that it knocks you off, just think of it as doing your bit for Gaia.
After all, climate botherers love to prattle that “the real problem is over-population”. So, show your commitment, greenies.