You see them everywhere. Poking out from beneath piles of yellow autumn leaves in parks. Gently bobbing along streams. Crumpled up on the floors of commuter trains. The sight of pale-blue face masks scattered across the landscape has become depressingly common over the past 18 months. Principally made from plastics, disposable masks can’t be processed through normal household recycling and are either sent to landfill, get incinerated or, as is often the case, end up in the ocean.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. From PPE (personal protective equipment) to hand sanitiser bottles, visors, gloves and takeaway food boxes, humanity has been using plastic with gusto throughout the pandemic.
However, designers, scientists and recycling businesses have been working hard to find better ways of managing this waste and turning it into something useful.
Just how big is the pandemic’s plastic problem? Reliable data on exactly how much additional waste Covid-19...