How Has the Pandemic Worsened the Amount of Marine Plastic Waste?

The world’s plastic problem has been in existence for many, many decades now.

However, it was only a few years ago when it gained the attention it deserved, thanks to the numerous videos and pictures of plastic washing ashore that flooded various social media platforms. According to paper published in Science in 2015, the non-profit organisation Plastic Oceans International, more than eight million metric tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean every year. Some of the most commonly found plastics floating along the waves are cigarette butts, food wrappers, beverage bottles and caps, straws, cups, plates and a variety of single-use plastic bags. In some parts of the world, ocean pollution has become so dire that governments were left with no choice but to close down even some of their most famous destinations -- regardless of the effects it has on tourism. In 2018, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a temporary closure period for Boracay to give way to the various rehabilitation and ocean cleanup initiatives. In that same year, Thailand’s National Parks Department also banned tourists from visiting the popular Maya Beach to give more time for its ecology to recover. As the world falls into a standstill due to the ongoing global health crisis, there has been a growing misperception that nature is ‘getting a break’ from humans. However, as explained in one of our previous posts that tackled ‘Covid19 and Its Impacts on Nature’, people are gravely mistaken. In reality, a significant number of rural areas in the tropics are currently faced with increased pressure from land grabbing, deforestation, illegal mining and wildlife poaching. In a similar fashion, coastal areas and other bodies of water are also seeing a significant increase in plastic waste and ocean pollution.

In a recent report by The Guardian, French non-profit Opération Mer Propre shared how during their cleanup activities they have found gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser among the waves of the Mediterranean. Along with these pandemic-related waste are the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminium cans.

In another part of the world, another non-profit organisation aimed at keeping oceans clean reported the very same thing. Earlier this year, OceanAsia detailed how their organisation has found large quantities of face masks littered along beaches and rural suburbs. On a particular beach in Lantau Island, Hongkong, they reported finding around 70 face masks disposed across an area of 100 metres long, and another 30 washed up on the shore. With the pandemic expected to trigger an estimated global use of 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves every month, based on a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, the sheer amount of these PPEs will surely pose grave threats not just to the world’s oceans but to the planet’s environment as a whole. To make things even worse, the practical problem with gloves and masks ending up in the ocean is that they can be easily mistaken by various marine life forms as jellyfish. Furthermore, the elastic components that this pandemic-related waste contains also increase the risks of entanglement for a large variety of fish, animals and birds.

Needless to say, the ongoing health crisis has not only placed the society at risk. It also endangered the lives of the marine wildlife, especially those that are inhabiting the oceans. This reality heightens the need for countries to focus on their recycling capacity and sustainability initiatives. Fortunately, a lot of nations are very much aware of this and are, in fact, already draughting plans to shift to a circular economy. Case in point, the Australian government recently invested over A$190 million (US$130 million) into the nation’s first Recycling Modernisation Fund, which aims to transform the country’s waste and recycling industry.