As September 2020 crawled to a warm, lazy close I kept walking. It was too hot for epic walks and all the pretty places were still crowded with furloughed workers so I mostly stuck close to home and walked the streets. The leaves were slowly beginning to turn as autumn approached and the mornings were often misty.
As the first of the leaves began to fall I noticed something a little more sinister littering the ground everywhere I walked.
The streets of the city were awash with discarded face masks and plastic gloves. They were everywhere. Every street corner, grass verge, trail and pavement was filled with them.
Disposable, single use face masks are made from polymers such as polypropylene, polyurethane, polyacrylonitrile, polystyrene, polycarbonate, polyethylene, or polyester. They are not biodegradable.
Medical gloves are made of different polymers including latex, nitrile rubber, polyvinyl chloride and neoprene. The environmental damage caused by these carelessly discarded items could be with us far longer than the virus that made them necessary. Even more concerning was the possibility that some of the masks and gloves floating about might also be contaminated with the virus itself, making them a biohazard.
It seemed to me that the face masks and gloves were likely to be doing more to spread the virus than they ever were to stop it. What I couldn’t understand was why someone would wear a mask, or gloves, presumably to stop the virus spreading, and then just throw it on the ground? It isn’t as if there aren’t any bins around. Even if there were no bins, there is no excuse for throwing litter of any kind on the ground. Do people not have pockets any more? Mine are always full of sweet wrappers, tissues, receipts and other assorted rubbish when I get home from a walk.
Litter is something that annoys me at the best of times. I often see it on my walks and wonder at the mentality of the kind of person who will carry a packet of sweets, a bag of crisps, a drink can, or a sandwich with them but is incapable of carrying the empty package back home again or depositing it in the nearest bin. This is especially true in the pretty places. These people have gone out of their way to go somewhere nice but think nothing of leaving their rubbish behind when they go home. After they’ve left the place is nowhere near as nice as it was before they arrived. Do they think there are fairies who come by night and clear up after them? Do they just throw their empty packages on the floor at home? In the past I’ve been known to pick things up myself and put them in a bin, or my overflowing pockets. Of course, since COVID, I’ve stopped doing that because you never can tell, can you?
To give an idea of the scale of the problem, all of the discarded masks and gloves above were photographed on one two mile walk. Sadly, masks and gloves were not the only things I discovered on that walk. The other litter was even more disgusting. I also spotted no less than five discarded disposable nappies.
Disposable nappies are made of a plastic outer layer, a core of cellulose fibre and sodium polyacrylate, covered by a layer of polymer-based material with rubber waist elastics and Velcro-like fasteners. The different materials in the nappies are glued together with polymer-based adhesives. Even without the contents provided by the baby, they are an environmental time bomb. It is impossible to comprehend the logic of someone who would carry a changing bag with them, change their child’s nappy and then think it was acceptable to just throw the used nappy on the ground. What kind of world do they want their child to grow up in? What sort of example are they setting?
It would be nice to think that this one walk was an isolated incident. Sadly, it wasn’t. The level of littering appeared to be growing faster than the virus. Maybe the pandemic wasn’t the biggest problem facing mankind at all, maybe the problem was mankind itself.
Marie, I agree with every word. I spotted (and am still spotting) so many discarded face masks just carelessly thrown on the ground, into the hedge etc when I am out walking. Aside from the more general environmental impact, what about the danger to wildlife and pets – one day walking home with my dog I realised she had picked something off the ground – yes it was a mask. I dread to think what would have happened had she swallowed it. I come across used nappies out in the forest, and other used personal items. The disgusting amount of litter and filth (there was even excrement deposited in burger boxes) left at the beaches in Bournemouth one weekend last summer was appalling – as a child I remember my family carefully checking the area of sand where we’d been sitting to make sure we hadn’t left any litter – everything was taken and put in a bin or taken home if we couldn’t find one. The example parents now set for their children is that it is acceptable behaviour to dump litter, and that it is someone elses job to clear up the mess. No matter that it costs councils thousands of pounds and no matter or thought for the risk to their health that others have to take.
The amount of litter seems to be rising since the pandemic began. The masks and gloves really worry me because of the risk of viral contamination. Obviously, they’re also an environmental disaster. I really don’t understand the mentality of people who just throw this stuff on the ground. So many people moan on and on about the environment and want everyone to do all sorts of things to save it, but if people can’t even keep their own streets and parks clean what chance do we have?
You are so right The shame of this unpleasant truth is that humans are killing our beautiful environment . Keep walking and posting,
The sad thing is, some of the humans leaving all this rubbish behind are the same humans protesting about saving the environment. The amount of litter, including shocking amounts of plastic, left behind after their protests is heartbreaking.I don’t know how things have gone so badly wrong in society in the last 30 years or so but it does make me despair. I will keep walking and posting though.
More on plastic polution on tv this week – Panorama on 25th October – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010zxs – it will be interesting to see if Coca cola will do anything about it.
Plastic bottles are so unnecessary yet millions of them are sold every single day. There doesn’t seem to be any will to do anything about it. Yet other, less productive things, like heat pumps and electric cars, things that most normal people can’t afford, are pushed constantly. I guess we can only do the right thing individually and boycott these products.