Plastic waste and the pandemic

Our use of plastic is changing worldwide – and not for the better. Many governments with bans or restrictions on the consumption of single-use plastics have withdrawn the bans and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, our consumption of them in the form of personal protective equipment (PPE) has escalated, with estimates as high as sixfold increases – much is unrecyclable, and domestic and small business users have no defined waste policy, with much of it ending up in recycling where, due to its medical nature, it cannot be processed. This causes bottlenecks in the recycling system, or illegal waste dumping.

Rubber trees.  松岡明芳 via WikiCommons.

Latex gloves are made from the rubber in rubber trees: a polymer of isoprene that is readily broken down in nature. However, not all plastics are so readily biodegradable. Some, such as nylon (also used in gloves), are a halfway house: they can decompose under warm, wet conditions, but are relatively sturdy; others, such as polypropylene (PP) (used in gowns and masks), which is a hydrocarbon with no oxygen nor nitrogen linkages to help make it compostable, may stick around for thousands of years.

Coronavirus 101

It’s devastating us now. But where did it come from, where is is going, and what is it anyway?

The disease COVID-19, caused by the virus commonly known as coronavirus, was thought to originate from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, where wild animals, including marmots, birds, rabbits, bats and snakes, are traded illegally. However, recent work has demonstrated that the market is only one possible origin of the disease. Potential patient zeroes – the first human to contract coronavirus – have found to have no link to the market.