The Covid crisis is now a garbage crisis, too - Economic Times

But old habits die hard, especially in countries where waste disposal guidelines have not been updated and officials are still preoccupied with fighting fresh outbreaks.

“Because there isn’t a route of transmission through recycling, say, we are still finding things being burned rather than recycled because people are scared” of surface transmission, said Anne Woolridge, who leads a working group on health care waste for the International Solid Waste Association.

“But because everybody’s saying anything to do with the pandemic is a medical waste, it’s put pressure on the system,” she said.

Recycling rates are now inching back to pre-COVID levels in developed economies, said James Michelsen, a solid-waste expert at International Finance Corp.

“The numbers are getting back to normal, and we’re pivoting away from a COVID discussion to one of, ‘OK, let’s get back to circularity, sustainability, plastics recycling,’” Michelsen said.

But in countries where recycling is driven by informal collectors, he added, lockdowns and outbreaks are still creating major disruptions.

As of this month, only about one-third of the usual number of waste pickers were at the Kampala city dump, said Luke Mugerwa, a representative for a local pickers group.

Most PPE is not hazardous, but many countries still classify it as such, said Michelsen.

The United Nations Environment Program estimated last year that health care facilities around the world were producing about 7.5 pounds of COVID-related medical waste per person per day worldwide.

It said that in Jakarta, Indonesia, and four other Asian megacities, the rate of overall health care waste disposal had risen by about 500%.

In the world’s poorest countries, that would pose a health risk to waste pickers.

And because syringes and vaccine vials are a valuable commodity on the black market, criminal gangs have an incentive to steal vaccination gear and illegally resell it into the health care system