New Covid blight caused by carelessly discarded face masks littering Edinburgh

Discarded face masks are blighting Edinburgh, the boss of a leading city waste firm has warned.

Dumped: Covid face mask dropped by a city wearer

The sight of carelessly discarded surgical face masks, stuck in trees, bushes and dumped on pavements hardly comes a shock to anyone anymore. However, the true scale of the issue may be an unwelcome surprise with the estimated number of disposable face masks to be used in the UK in 2021 reaching 19.5 billion.

Of course, the use of face masks is crucial in preventing the spread of Covid-19. What we decide to do with them after use is a whole different story. The disposal of masks is often challenging, with no easy way to recycle and conflicting ways to handle potentially contaminated masks – the real issue is the littering caused by careless users.

“The scale of the problem of carelessly dumped disposable face masks is massive – residents of Edinburgh use 379,441 single use single-use masks a day and sadly some of these are being dropped, or simply fall from people’s pockets – sightings are increasingly common now”, explains Charlotte Green of capital waste company TradeWaste.co.uk.

In order to better understand what 19.5 billion face masks look like, they translate to 1.6 billion each month and 52 million each day. The weight of the annual amount of disposed masks in the UK alone is equivalent to five and a half Eiffel Towers. Across the UK, it has been reported that litter picking groups are finding one mask for every 60m they patrol, especially near shops, during their rounds.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.