Why the mask has become a source of pollution, one year was thrown away nearly 1.6 billion; natural degradation takes 450 years!

2021-04-15

As a mask manufacturer, the last thing we want to see is our masks being discarded after use. Masks are the most effective tool for isolating viral infections, and they are produced very quickly. Still, if they are discarded, they take up to several hundred years to degrade, causing severe harm to the environment.


While we are being protected

We also need to think more about the environment!


With the spread of the epidemic worldwide, masks can be said to be a "necessity of life". To a certain extent, they are our "god of protection! However, in places where we do not pay attention, it harms the ecological environment and the lives of some creatures.


01

Mask pollution, more severe than you think!

On the other side of the mountain, on the other side of the sea, there are piles of discarded blue masks!
This is not a joke; remember the French marine protection organization members in the last year once flirtatiously said, "France has just ordered 2 billion masks, the Mediterranean Sea will soon be more masks than jellyfish", but this is just the beginning.

Masks-discarded-in-the-ocean

The World Conservation Organization once warned that if 1% of all masks were mishandled, there could be 10 million discarded masks per month.

According to a recent OCEANS ASIA report in December 2020, at least 1.56 billion masks will be discarded worldwide 2020!

These masks are equivalent to 4680 tons to 6240 tons of plastic waste, or into the ocean, or hidden in the land, and the discarded shows rely on the natural environment to degrade; it will take about 450 years!

Even in foreign countries, there are employees in the supermarket who complained, "the most you can see in the shopping cart before is occasionally a dirty diaper, now many people are throwing disposable masks gloves inside. Every time, so that I have to carry a garbage bag to clean up"!

Complaining about the discarded masks-in-the-shopping-cart

So, it's not that there is no pollution, but someone is paying for these actions.


02

What can we do for the environment?

The first thing to understand is:Why do masks become "pollution"?


The primary material of disposable masks is polypropylene; its fibre diameter is excellent, only 1 to 5 microns, can be very good at filtering out impurities and airborne viruses. This material has a more common name: plastic.

It is not difficult to explain why the natural degradation of the mask takes a hundred years!

other-types-of-pollution

After recognizing this, many public interest organizations have taken action.

At the beach in the Soko Islands in Hong Kong, China, volunteers were able to hang a long branch from what they picked up around the shore, and the hard-to-believe point is that only half an hour had passed since the event.

Pick-up-masks at the beach

The masks protect us from the virus, but in a way that accelerates the extinction of wildlife. We won't give up protecting ourselves in this situation, but we can't continue to harm the natural environment either. It's up to us to discipline our behaviour. Otherwise, the current situation is just the beginning!

Before you throw away your muzzle, please cut the string, put it in a bag, tie it up and throw it in the trash! Don't let "ecological destruction" become the path to the demise of the virus!

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