Team:JNFLS/Description
You may recall that in the early days of novel Coronavirus that has been epidemic around the world, with half of the world's population living in isolation, the air around the earth was so purified that the gray sky in the city suddenly became high and blue, and the rivers and lakes became clear……
New Delhi
Venice
London
However, a new type of contamination is emerging, derived from novel Coronavirus, which is worthy of caution, showing in the following pictures.
In May, in Antibes, a city of southeastern France on the Mediterranean Sea, members of Operation Mer Propre (Opération mer propre), a local NON-GOVERNMENTAL organization, went into the sea as usual to clean up rubbish left behind by humans, usually piled up with plastic bottles, cans and other household waste. This time, the sea floor was littered with masks, disposable gloves and other protective gear that everyone needs right now...
Environmental groups say hundreds, if not millions, of disposable masks have been dumped outdoors since the public was told to wear them. Beach cleanup volunteers across the country have also expressed concern about the massive pollution, which they say is "out of control."
Ben Landricombe, a volunteer at the Perranporth beach resort in North Cornwall, said he had not been able to pick up all day and had tried to take as much rubbish as he could, but more items had been left on the beach in North Cornwall and were "sinking into the sand".
Scout leader Karen Blanchfield and Clean Britain organised 15 scavenger runs in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire, with 195 children taking part. She said, "Masks are everywhere! Nobody CARES!"
The same is true in Hong Kong. Here's the news “Sadly No Shortage of Surgical Masks On Hong Kong Beaches“:
The abandoned masks on the continents or in the water might be eaten by mistake by the wild animals, these masks cannot be digested in biological way and will block alimentary canals. Lastly the animals will die because of hard digestion of food. On September 9, a flattened penguin carcass was found on Juquehy beach in Sao Paulo state in southeastern Brazil. After an autopsy, the Marine conservation group Instituto Argonauta found an N95 mask in its stomach. Based on their migration route, it was assumed that the penguin had followed a group from Patagonia in southern Argentina to forage for food, then mistook the mask for food.
Nowadays，it is a serious problem that everyday people disposed more than 200 million masks. More worsely, because the main component of a medical mask is polypropylene, which needs 200 to 1000 years to be decomposed in a natural environment. The polypropylene is a polymer with stable structure, which is not easy to be degraded by natural microorganisms. If mixed in the soil, it will also affect the growth of crops and soil fertility, and the decline of crop yield will bring incalculable damage to agriculture. It is really a very intractable problem.
So, how to combat COVID-19 and reduce environmental hazards at the same time becomes the new research field. Our team were trying to find an appropriate way to deal with this trouble. Because of the nature of polypropylene, we found it hard to make it biodegradable directly, then we decided to change a direction. Using a degradable material to produce masks can be a good idea. After many searching, we found that the bacterial cellulose can satisfy our needs for making a mask.