Disposable masks are mainly made from plastic fibers that take hundreds of years to disintegrate. Since the start of the pandemic two years ago, global mask production has exploded to 129 billion per month, compared with an estimated 8 billion for the whole of 2019. Nearly 1.6 billion of these masks probably ended up in the seas in 2020, according to a conservative assumption by marine conservation association OceansAsia, which estimates that around 3% of the masks manufactured that year ended up in the waste. In view of the prolonged nature of the epidemic and those that may follow, it is urgent to find sustainable alternatives.
