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Across Brazil, recycling facilities stopped working for months. A junkyard in Uganda is experiencing a shortage of reusable plastic. In the Indonesian capital, disposable gloves and face shields pile up at the mouth of the river.

The increased consumption of plastic and packaging during the pandemic has produced mountains of waste. But as fears of Covid-19 caused business to stop at recycling facilities, some reusable materials were trashed or incinerated instead.

At the same time, solid waste experts say that large volumes of personal protective equipment are incorrectly classified as hazardous. This material is generally not allowed to be disposed of in the regular trash, so most of it ends up in burn pits or as garbage.

In either case, experts say one problem is that an early fear that the coronavirus could easily spread through surfaces creates a hard-to-shake stamp on the handling of perfectly safe garbage. Many scientists and government agencies they have since discovered that the fear of surface contamination is wildly exaggerated. But old habits die hard, especially in countries where waste disposal guidelines have not been updated and authorities are still busy tackling new outbreaks.

“Since there is no transmission route through recycling, we still find things that are incinerated rather than recycled because people fear superficial contamination,” said Anne Woolridge, who leads a working group on International Healthcare waste. Solid Waste Association. “You are trying to educate the entire world population in less than a year. This is impossible.”

As for personal protective equipment, Dr. Woolridge said that the image of gloves and masks polluting the world would be unthinkable before the pandemic. However, it is a medical waste for everyone to say something about the pandemic, which puts pressure on the system,” he said.

recycling shutdowns

recycling rates last year experienced a sharp decline worldwide, partly because demand from manufacturers has fallen. In many countries where the recycling industry is still run by manual sorting rather than machinery, face-to-face work has been suspended due to virus fears.

In Brazil, for example, production of recyclable materials in cities increased 25 percent in 2020, primarily due to an increase in online shopping, according to Abrelpe, a national association of sanitation companies. However, recycling programs in some cities still suspended operations for several months, citing fears of surface contamination.

This had net human and environmental costs. A recent study It found that during the suspension period, there were at least 16,000 tonnes of less recyclable material in circulation than normal, resulting in an economic loss of approximately $1.2 million per month for waste collector associations. Another study found that a one-month suspension missed opportunity Saving the amount of electricity used by more than 152,000 households.

“It highlighted the weaknesses of our suspension system,” said Liane Nakada, a co-author of the second paper and a researcher at the University of Campinas. She and her husband kept their recycling at home for months to avoid inappropriate disposal, but they were the exception.

a global divide

James D. Michelsen, solid waste specialist at International Finance Corporation, said recycling rates are now back to pre-Covid levels in advanced economies.

“The numbers are returning to normal and we’re going from a Covid discussion to one of ‘OK, let’s get back to circularity, sustainability, plastic recycling,'” Michelsen said.

But in countries where recycling is driven by informal collectors, quarantines and epidemics still create major disruptions.

Before a recent COVID-19 outbreak hit Kampala, Uganda, hundreds of people gathered in a city dump to collect plastic. They would then sell the plastics to intermediaries who then sell it to recycling companies.

But when you enter the country a crash this summer, movement restrictions prevented trucks from collecting garbage in some counties. There were also fears of surface contagion: Authorities said Covid was on the rise because people weren’t washing their hands.

Luke Mugerwa, a representative of a local collection group, said that as of this month, only one-third of the normal number of waste collectors is in the Kampala city dump. Some manufacturers who came looking for reclaimed plastics had bad luck.

“They are looking for plastic to buy every day,” said Mr Mugerwa. “There is demand, but the supply is very low,” he said.

proliferating PPE

Another challenge is the used personal protective equipment that has flooded the world since the early days of the pandemic. About eight million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, and experts fear the use of PPE and other garbage. make this situation worse.

Mr Michelsen of the International Finance Corporation said most PPE is not dangerous, but many countries still classify it as such. This means that used gloves and masks are often put together with truly hazardous medical waste and either processed at great expense – a waste of money – or otherwise disposed of.

Dr. “If high volumes are coming from behind your hospitals in these uninfrastructured areas, they will just set it on fire,” Woolridge said.

United Nations Environment Program estimated last year He said healthcare facilities around the world are generating about 7.5 pounds of Covid-related medical waste per person per day worldwide. In Jakarta, Indonesia and four other Asian megacities, the overall healthcare waste disposal rate has increased by nearly 500 percent, he said.

Some of this waste inevitably turns into garbage. Pre-pandemic pollution surveys at a local estuary in the Indonesian capital by the Oceanographic Research Center did not reveal much PPE, but a recent survey revealed that equipment such as masks, face shields, gloves and protective gear accounted for about 15 percent of the pollution.

“Even in Jakarta, which has the country’s largest budget for environmental management, waste still seeps into the environment,” said Mohammed Reza Cordova, a scientist involved in river studies. “What about other areas with smaller budgets?”

syringe hunt

An emerging concern is that syringes and other truly hazardous medical waste could end up in the wrong places as the flood of supplies puts new pressures on local authorities.

In the world’s poorest countries, this would pose a health risk to waste collectors. For example, in Bangladesh, tens of thousands of people are already cleaning up landfills. But Mostafizur Rahman, a solid waste specialist in the capital Dhaka, said only three or four of the country’s 64 regions have facilities to safely dispose of used syringes.

A professor of environmental sciences at Jahangirnagar University, Dr. “These landfills are not safe or sanitary, so it is really a concern in terms of environmental health and safety measures,” Rahman said.

And because syringes and vials of vaccines are a valuable commodity on the black market, criminal gangs have an incentive to steal vaccine equipment and illegally resell it into the healthcare system.

late last year, Interpol warned He said the pandemic has already “triggered unprecedented opportunistic and predatory criminal behavior” regarding the theft, tampering and illegal advertising of Covid-19 and flu vaccines. Warning, even most of the world’s population Got the Covid vaccine.

“This is a real problem in the market” said Mr. Michelsen. “These bottles have great black market value because you can fill them with whatever you want and sell them.”

Manuela Andreoni, Muktita Suhartono and Musinguzi Blanche contributing reporting.