Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. The biggest thriver in the height of the pandemic was the wasteful nature of humans and our poor foresight into the consequences of our actions.

In the initial outgoing of the COVID-19 pandemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) output exploded with the global demand of single use face mask to be almost 129 billion masks per month. Most of these included face masks and gloves. As a result, from March 2020 to October 2020, the amount of abandoned face masks increased approximately 80 times.

In addition to face masks and gloves, single use plastic demand and production increased at an unprecedented rate.

However, somewhere between our wasteful nature and fear, humans have unleashed an amount of garbage into our environment that may last centuries. Unfortunately, innocent, unknowingly wildlife have to take the unnecessary consequences of our selfish and thoughtless response.

Published in journal Science of the Total Environment, researchers gathered 114 sightings of how wildlife consequently is effected by PPE. Most of these are due to entanglement.

Of the 114 sightings, a majority are birds at 83%. Mammals were effected in 11%, fish in 2%, and 3.5% involved invertebrates.

Sightings included entanglement (42%) and masks and gloves ending up in nests (40%). Other ways PPE were destructive to wildlife including digestion.

Because study involved just sightings, the reality of how much damage our irresponsible use of PPE and plastic is mostly likely several times much worse and further studies will need to investigate because the estimated time for a PPE mask to decompose approximately 450 years.

Haste makes waste, and the human wasteful nature and irresponsible reaction to fear is a threat to our own existence.

J Ammendolia et al, Tracking the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic-related debris on wildlife using digital platforms, Science of The Total Environment (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157614