Following COVID, we’ve all paid a lot more attention to avoiding illness the past couple of years, we’ve also had to think about some new kinds of waste. We’re figuring out how to recycle disposable masks and properly dispose of cloth masks to avoid PPE pollution. We worry whether all those little plastic bottles of hand sanitizer will end up polluting the ocean and if cloth masks expose us to toxins. It’s almost enough to make you want to take your chances against infection. But even if there’s an environmental cost to staying well, it’s important to keep it in perspective. Let’s take a look at the environmental cost of getting sick.
Disposable PPE
If you feel bad about using disposable masks to prevent infection in daily life, just think how many single-use masks and gloves are used for a single doctor visit. It’s estimated that a single intensive care hospital…