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Recycling facemasks into civil construction material to manage waste generated during COVID-19

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Abstract

Growing plastic pollution in the context of COVID-19 has caused significant challenges, exacerbating this already out-of-control issue. The pandemic has considerably boosted the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), such as facemasks and gloves, all over the globe, and mismanaging this growing plastic pollution has harmed the environment and wildlife significantly. To mitigate negative environmental impacts, it is necessary to develop and implement effective waste management strategies. This present study estimated the daily facemask generation throughout the pandemic in Iran based on the distribution of urban and rural populations and, likewise, the daily generation of hand gloves in the COVID-19 era and the amount of medical waste generated by COVID-19 patients were calculated. In the next step, the quantities of discarded facemasks dumped into the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman from the coastal cities were determined. Finally, the innovative alternatives for repurposing discarded facemasks in civil construction materials such as concrete, pavement, and partition wall panel were discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Atiyeh Najafighodousi

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Fariba Nemati

  3. Centre for Infrastructure Engineering, Western Sydney University, Kingswood, NSW, 2747, Australia

    Arash Rayegani

  4. Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Mohammad Saberian

  5. Center for Environmental Economics and Technology, Department of Environment of Iran, Tehran, Iran

    Leila Zamani

  6. School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jie Li

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  1. Atiyeh Najafighodousi
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Contributions

FN: methodology, validation, investigation, writing—original draft, data curation, formal analysis, visualization. AN: methodology, validation, investigation, writing—original draft, data curation, formal analysis, visualization. AR: methodology, validation, investigation, writing—original draft, visualization. MS: writing—review and editing, supervision, validation, supervision, project administration. LZ: methodology, validation, investigation, visualization. JL: writing—review and editing, project administration. All authors contributed to the research article and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Saberian.

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Najafighodousi, A., Nemati, F., Rayegani, A. et al. Recycling facemasks into civil construction material to manage waste generated during COVID-19. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 12577–12590 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31726-8

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