Abstract
Since the start of the outbreak COVID-19 epidemic by a novel coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-2) early in December 2020, several countries worldwide have sought to shield their citizens by numerous prevention measures which protective gear is often considered high-demand personal protective equipment (PPE). It has promoted important advancement in the environment and public health, particularly during the COVID-19 outbreak. The PPE kits including face masks, gowns, gloves, hand sanitizer bottles, and other PPE packaging materials used at hospitals, quarantine centers, and households to prevent of spreading of SARS-CoV-2 particles are made up of single-use plastic. Hence, the extensive usage of these protective gears at the global level leads to the generation of plastic residues worldwide. Plastics are difficult to degrade and decay in natural environment, and plastic needs several hundred years to get degraded. The weathering of the plastic waste due to various environmental forces leads to the generation of smaller plastic particles, viz., microplastic, mesoplastic, and nanoplastic. So, due to the ultra-usage of protective gears, huge quality of plastic waste including microplastic got generated in the environment. In the present chapter, an attempt was made to overview the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the generation of plastic waste under the following lines: (i) to discuss the properties and types of plastic used in the COVID-19 outbreak as a protective measure, (ii) to enlist the types of plastic waste generated in the current epidemic, (iii) to highlight the methods employed for plastic waste treatment (PWTs), and (iv) to recommend the mitigation measures to manage the plastic waste.
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Sangkham, S. (2022). Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on the Generation of Plastic Waste. In: Shahnawaz, M., Sangale, M.K., Daochen, Z., Ade, A.B. (eds) Impact of Plastic Waste on the Marine Biota. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5403-9_3
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