As if the Texas-sized gyre of plastic floating around the Pacific Ocean was not troubling enough, now there is a new scourge polluting the world’s waters: face masks and sanitary gloves.
The COVID-19 detritus has meant that discarded face masks floating like jelly fish and latex gloves lining the seafloor are adding to the world’s plastic waste crisis, as The Guardian reported.
In an effort to clean up the Mediterranean Sea, divers from the French non-profit, Opération Mer Propre (Operation Clean Sea) found dozens of gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitizer beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, mixed in with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminum cans, according to The Guardian.
While the amount of personal protective equipment found in the Mediterranean was admittedly small, the uptick in pollution from those items signals an ominous trend. Disposable masks, for instance, may feel like soft cotton, but they’re almost all made from non-biodegradable material such as polypropylene. Read more…
