While the rapid distribution of PPE has been essential to COVID response, it’s also creating major environmental issues. To raise awareness of this problem and how to tackle it, Safetec have created a comprehensive guide.

How to Reduce & Dispose of Our PPE Waste More Responsibly covers:

1. Short-term and long-term effects of PPE damage on the environment
2. Wider plastic waste and the pandemic
3. How to safely dispose of PPE used during COVID-19
4. Advice for reducing the amount of PPE wastage

Here are just a handful of the insights from the guide:

1. In the UK, 784 million PPE items were used in hospitals in just a 53-day period at the start of the pandemic. This equated to 14 million pieces of equipment being thrown away daily.
2. If every person wears a single-use face mask every day for a year, as much as 66,000 tonnes of unrecyclable plastic waste could be thrown away. This would cause damage to marine ecosystems, as well as pollution of natural resources.
3. The sudden need for single-use PPE, bubble wrap for the transportation of online shopping and numerous other COVID-related factors have directly resulted in a surge in plastic production. Most of this plastic is “new plastic”, rather than recycled plastic – new plastic is far more damaging to the environment but 83-93% cheaper to produce