Page 34 - Clean India Journal Magazine - November issue

WASTE MANAGEMENT

PPE:

Personal Polluting

Equipment

While the focus is understandably on

providing frontline personnel with PPE to

safeguard their health, we also urgently
need to scale up our capacity for safely
processing used PPE, which is made from

non-biodegradable, single-use plastics.

Dr Mrigank Warrier takes a deep-dive
into the scale of the PPE waste problem, and
what can be done to mitigate it.

e are sitting on plastic-based PPE equipment
a ticking time- has been rapid. For example,
bomb, and between 2016 and 2020, the
it’s not just compound annual rate of
Wthe pandemic increase in the global market
that might explode. Until the for PPE was 6.5%, from
latter began, single-use plastics approximately $40 billion to
(SUPs) were frowned upon; we $58 billion. In 2020 alone, the
didn’t want to use them, we were World Health Organization has
trying to find ways to get rid of projected that PPE supplies must the city produced approximately
them safely, and we had begun increase by 40% monthly to deal 240 tonnes of medical waste
to find substitutes that could effectively with the pandemic. daily -- six times higher than
have eventually phased them out Even after a vaccine is approved before the disease outbreak.
forever. Then the virus struck, and cases begin to decline, the The local waste management
and every healthcare facility in demand for PPE is not expected agencies had to deploy mobile
the world -- from the smallest to decline substantially; it is incinerators in the city to dispose
rural clinic to the most mammoth predicted to rise at an estimated of the unprecedented quantities
corporate hospital began a compound annual growth rate of of discarded face masks, gloves,
desperate search for SUPs -- in the 20% in facial and surgical masks and other contaminated single-use
form of PPE. supply from 2020 to 2025. protective gear.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, At the peak of the pandemic Hong Kong is well-known for
the increase in the production of in its origin -- Wuhan (China) -- controlling its caseload because its

34 Clean India Journal n November 2020 n www.cleanindiajournal.com