Report: The oceans are polluted with thousands of tons of Corona waste emitted from hundreds of countries… including an Arab country

A new report revealed that 193 countries generated 8 million tons of waste during the coronavirus pandemic.

And the report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences continued that about 26,000 tons of the eight million tons of waste of personal protective equipment used during the pandemic, which is mostly plastic waste, seeped into the world’s oceans and ended up on beaches and the seabed.
“The (COVID-19) pandemic has led to an increase in demand for single-use plastics that is intensifying pressure on the already out-of-control global plastic waste problem,” said study authors Yiming Peng, Bibi Wu, Amina T Shartop, and Yanxu Zhang.

The researchers believe that about 87 percent of the waste is coming from hospitals rather than individuals, that countries are unable to deal with and efficiently treat the huge amount of plastic waste, and that most of the global dump comes from Asia with 72 percent.

The researchers added that there are 10 rivers that represent 79 percent of the plastic waste discharge associated with the Corona pandemic, and the rivers that take the first place are the Shatt al-Arab in Iraq, the Indus River in India, and the Yangtze River in China.

In the summary of their study, they indicated that “the coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in the demand for single-use plastics, which increases pressure on the already out-of-control global plastic waste problem,” they said.

The report also noted that “plastic is suitable for the production of personal protective equipment and packaging due to its durability and cheap price, but this plastic endangers marine life and threatens long-term issues for the coastal environment and the ecosystem.”

The authors of the new study are from the School of Atmospheric Sciences at the Nanjing University of China, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California.

In a related context, another report revealed that 1.56 million medical masks were thrown into the ocean during the past year 2020.