At the end of the very first month of the official lockdown to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in Bangladesh, about 14500 tons of hazardous plastic waste has emerged from the dramatically increased use of single-use surgical face masks, hand gloves, hand sanitizers, and polythene bags in communities and health care facilities, a recent study by ESDO reveals. About 11.2% of this waste apparently comes from the use of surgical face masks, 21.5% from polythene-made normal hand gloves, 20% from surgical hand gloves, 40.9% from the single-use polythene shopping bags used for carrying food items, and 6.4% from empty containers of hand sanitizers. ESDO has recently conducted a study on single-use plastic waste generation at the advent of the coronavirus pandemic in Bangladesh.
