Discarded personal protection equipment, such as masks and gloves, are finding their way into the oceans — joining plastic straws and bags and other pollutants. The “pandemic of plastic pollution” is a result of the widespread adoption of PPE, leading to an increase of as much as 300% in consumption of single-use plastic in the U.S. since the pandemic took hold. Also contributing is the boom in e-commerce and its plastic-wrapped goods. Experts fear that years of conditioning the public to ditch single-use plastic may have been in vain.
