The TLDR: We take a closer look at escalating levels of plastic pollution caused by the pandemic—the effects of which will be with us for decades to come, long after the virus has run its course. (on request from subscriber Udaya Nath)

Researched by: Sara Varghese and Vagda Galhotra

Before the coronavirus arrived…

The big numbers: According to 2018-2019 data, India generated 3.36 million (33.6 lakh) metric tonnes of plastic waste per year—which is about 9,200 metric tonnes a day. The worst offender: Goa, which contributed 60 grams per person per day. FYI: Around 5-6% of our solid waste is plastic. 

Going green: While our numbers were big, the government was finally making moves to crack down on plastic pollution back in 2018. The health ministry and the PM pledged to phase out single-use plastics by 2022 (which sounds like a pipe dream now!). And a number of states had imposed bans. Most recently, the government unveiled the draft version of new rules that impose a blanket ban on single use plastic.

But, but, but: Let’s be clear, enforcement of these bans has always been very lax—and they have rarely worked. As one researcher writes in The Wire:

“From the public-policy point of view, a ban is lazy policymaking. It gives the citizens an illusion of good governance but in reality it is just a red herring. This is not to say that bans don’t work at all: the bans on guns and drugs in India has worked fairly well. However, you can still get your hands on either if you’re determined. The simple reason plastic bans don’t work is that they are not backed by the same regulatory seriousness. Once the government announces a ban, it is the responsibility of feebly empowered agencies... and state pollution control boards to enforce it. These agencies are already fighting a losing battle, failing at their job to protect the environment thanks to multiple challenges.”

Pandemic ke side-effects

The virus brought with it an obsession with hygiene—and therefore an entire plethora of single-use items which became part of our daily life. We began to associate plastic with safety.

Face masks: An airborne virus requires masking up. And while many of the available masks are reusable, the disposable kind remains hugely popular due to frontline workers, delivery services etc. Just in February, 2020, single use face mask production soared to 116 million per day in China. Or to put this another way: If the entire global population just used one disposable mask a day, the pandemic will account for 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves being discarded per month! That translates into 3 million face masks used per minute. Asia is projected to throw away 1.8 billion face masks daily—the highest quantity for any continent.

Hospital boom: Plastic is the bedrock of medical equipment and protective gear. The pandemic inevitably escalated their use—and from the very beginning. Hospitals in Wuhan, China, produced more than 240 tonnes of medical plastic waste per day at the peak of its outbreak. In Chennai, a single hospital bed before the pandemic would generate 0.5 kg of biomedical waste a day. By October, that number had gone up to 3-5 kg. Before the pandemic, we generated 610 metric tonnes of biomedical waste. That has now gone up to 765.5 MT. The amount of waste generated between June and December: 33,000 MT. 

Airport waste: India’s six busiest airports now generate 6,000 kilos of bio-medical waste every day compared to near zero before the pandemic. Airlines in India collectively use around 80,000 PPE kits daily to meet government guidelines for both staff and passengers.

Single use everything: 

• Early in the pandemic, there was great fear of the virus spreading via contaminated surfaces. We put away our reusable bags and embraced the plastic kind in a big way. 
• Thailand lifted its ban on plastic bags. The result: Bangkok alone consumed 62% more plastic in April, 2020, than it did 12 months before. 
• Also back in circulation: disposable utensils. For example, quarantine centres stopped using stainless steel tumblers and plates. 
• Also: a surge in plastic-coated paper cups which are impossible to recycle, and end up in landfills. 
• And last not least: takeout packaging and cutlery as we moved away from restaurants and on to our Swiggy app. During an eight-week lockdown, Singapore’s 5.7 million residents generated 1,470 additional tonnes of plastic waste from food deliveries alone. 

Online shopping: Stuck at home, we’ve all turned to retail therapy—which in turn means lots and lots of packaging, including bubble wrap. Just in 2019, Amazon generated 465 million pounds of plastic packaging waste—of which 22.44 million pounds ended up in the world’s freshwater and marine ecosystems or “roughly equivalent to a delivery van’s worth of plastic being dumped into major rivers, lakes, and the oceans every 70 minutes.” FYI: Amazon recorded net sales of $96.2 billion in the third quarter of 2020—37% better than the same period in 2019. 

Point to note: The pandemic triggered a sense of crisis and urgency and essentially let everyone—be it citizens, companies or governments—off the hook. As a Greenpeace researcher puts it:

“Some people will call it disaster capitalism.Using this moment where everything is in chaos and people are legitimately concerned about public health to turn back the clock to go back to a world where plastic is the norm, rather than right now where reusables are becoming the norm in many places.”

The great fall of recycling

Before the pandemic, there was a big government push on recycling. And the companies themselves were keen to show that the plastics industry was moving towards recyclable products to avoid bans—and make us feel better about using their products. But the pandemic brought a lot of that to a crashing halt: 

• Recycling was not considered an essential service in most countries—neither were the workers in the industry.
• Across the world, the recycling industry itself experienced severe financial losses due to citywide lockdowns, social distancing, and limited operations. 
• In India, recycling has always been a grey area. As Economic Times points out: “We have no evidence on how much plastic is being recycled, how it’s being recycled and who is doing it.” Less than 10% of the recyclers in India operated during the last lockdown. That number recovered post-lockdown but it has likely crashed again in the second wave. 
• In India, we also rely heavily on human labour to pick through and recycle waste. And during lockdowns, most of them were not allowed to go to work. And the waste instead ended up in landfills and incinerators. 
• And due to reduced demand and prices for the plastic waste they are able to collect, recycling workers too are in great financial distress. 

Enter ‘new plastics’:  The pandemic has also depressed oil and natural gas prices across the world (except of course at our local petrol pump). And that’s had a knock-on effect on recycling:

“Oil and natural gas (the latter of which was already at record low prices pre-COVID) are the key raw materials used to make plastic. Their all-time low cost has increased the price disparity between alternative materials (think cellulose, seaweed) and virgin plastic, which has always been the most inexpensive way to package goods. To be financially competitive in the marketplace, it is now extremely advantageous to package your goods in newly made, cheap virgin plastic.”

The bottomline: Disposable masks take up to 450 years to decompose—and a single face mask releases as many as 173,000 microfibers per day into the seas. An estimated 1.5 billion masks entered the oceans in 2020.

Reading list

• LA Times and Science Magazine offer a global overview of the sheer magnitude of plastic waste generated by the pandemic. Economic Times focuses on India.
• Centre for Science and Environment has a good report on India’s plastic waste management system.
• Reuters has a must read investigation on why industries prefer using new or virgin plastic. 
• Also read this GA Circular study about how the recycling chains in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines have been hard-hit due to lockdowns. 
• Scientific American and National Geographic report on the global impact of  pandemic plastic waste on our oceans. Mongabay looks at the effects in India. 
• Smithsonian Magazine has an excellent overview of reporting on animals who have been severely impacted by pandemic plastic pollution.
• Hindustan Times has a must read on the bio-medical waste management crisis in India.
• Down to Earth analyses the latest push against plastic pollution: the draft of India’s Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2021.
• If you need something to make you feel better, fashion designer Lakshmi Menon is repurposing PPE scraps to make mattresses.