Activists in Hong Kong are growing concerned with the environmental consequences of one-use face masks as the products have started to litter beaches.
“Nobody wants to go to the forest and find masks littered everywhere or used masks on the beaches. It is unhygienic and dangerous,” Laurence McCook, the head of oceans conservation at the World Wildlife Fund in Hong Kong, told Reuters on Thursday.
Gary Stokes, the founder of the environmental group Oceans Asia, said they are already seeing the environmental effects even though they “only have had masks for the last six to eight weeks in a massive volume.”
“That was quite alarming for us,” he said about finding 70 discarded masks in a 100-meter stretch of beach.
Conservation groups have started organizing crews to pick up the trash on the beaches. “People think they’re protecting themselves, but it’s not just about protecting yourselves. You need to protect everybody, and by not throwing away the mask properly, it’s very selfish,” Tracey Read, founder of the group Plastic Free Seas in Hong Kong, said.
The coronavirus was labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization on Wednesday. The disease has infected more than 125,000 people worldwide and killed nearly 5,000 people globally.
