Fact check: Is plastic essential in the fight against Covid-19?
Despite the law of 1ᵉʳ January 2020 on banning the use of certain single-use plastic objects (straws, cutlery...) plastic is back in force.
Nathalie Gontard, Inrae and Valérie Guillard, University of Montpellier
The industry is riding the Covid-19 wave: packaging, overwraps, masks, visors, retailer protection and Plexiglas are being mass-produced and consumed.
Plastic's transparency makes it an ideal ally when it comes to separating a retailer's customers, for example. But the hygienic argument is the most widely used: disposable plastic offers greater protection than other materials.
What exactly is the difference? Our experts compare plastic masks and natural-fiber masks.
Microfiber masks... made of plastic
The most common, inexpensive and widely distributed masks are made from an assembly of polypropylene microfibers, the plastic resin par excellence. Polypropylene is the second most widely used plastic after polyethylene. You'll easily find it in your neighbor's artificial turf or your car's bumper. Other masks are made from polyester microfibres.
The microfiber mat of these masks lets the air breathed in through them, while at the same time stopping any small elements suspended in the atmosphere, such as micro-droplets of water capable of carrying a virus, emitted by the individuals wearing them... or those who don't wear them.
Synthetic microfibres are inexpensive and manufactured in abundance by the petrochemical industries. Objects containing them can therefore be easily acquired and then discarded, a practical way of saving time - the great obsession of modern times. What's more, new objects or virgin materials (still) convey an image of progress, guaranteed quality and safety, particularly in terms of health, for the individual who can buy them. Disposables promise to renew this promise of health and safety time and time again.
The health crisis, an opportunity for some
It's precisely the coronavirus health crisis that has led to a resurgence in the use of plastic and boosted sales of disposable products: masks, but also single-use cups in fast-food restaurants, Internet orders and drive-throughs in plastic film, checkout bags, protective screens in stores and restaurants, and so on.
The coronavirus crisis hit us right in the middle of the global plastic detox program. The disposable category is now trying to make a comeback and establish itself as the hygienic material that saves lives by avoiding contamination due to the reuse of materials.
The economic stakes are such that some manufacturers are not hesitating to ride the wave of anxiety linked to the health crisis to defy bans and boost their business. On April 8, EuPC, the European plastics converters' lobby, wrote to the European Commission asking it to postpone the European directive on single-use plastics (SUP) "for at least one more year at national level" and to "lift all bans" already in place, a request rejected by the Commission.
Is natural fibre less clean and less efficient?
The virus persists for several hours to several days on all surfaces, including plastic microfibers. All other conditions being equal, a coronavirus would persist much longer on a disposable polypropylene microfiber gown than on a cotton gown or paper surface.
In addition, masks made from natural fibers such as cotton, flannel, silk or hemp are just as effective as surgical masks made from synthetic fibers, trapping at least 80% of particles with an average size of 60 nanometers thanks to a combined physical filtration and electrostatic effect. The performance of a sufficiently dense mask, whatever the nature of its fibers, is linked above all to its fit to the contours of the face.
But above all, plastic persists for a long time, up to several centuries, in our environment in the form of micro- and then nanoparticles. The microfibers in your mask have every chance of ending up on your plate or that of your grandchildren. The mechanism is quite implacable: plastic microfibers disintegrate, fragment, multiply, diffuse in our environment, load up with pollutants and end up contaminating our food chain and threatening the proper functioning of living organisms. The major risk associated with the use of plastics lies not only in the emission ofCO2 during their life cycle, but above all in their capacity to generate fine-particle pollution long after they have been used. By biodegrading, natural fibers have always been able to make themselves forgotten as they reintegrate the biological carbon cycle, and so do not present the ultimate danger of plastic.
Pragmatism and precaution
It would be tempting to give up and turn back the clock on single-use plastics, relying instead on encouraging the collection and subsequent recycling of used masks. But "recycling" means giving an object back the properties it had before use, so that it can be reused in the same way. It's a loop which, to be effective, needs to be closed - something we don't know how to do for synthetic microfibers, which irreversibly degrade during use.
So let's try to stay the course and remain pragmatic in these viral times: washing a natural-fiber mask remains the most effective form of recycling for eliminating contaminants, particularly viral ones, the most economical and environmentally-friendly, and the most accessible to all.
The "precautionary principle", which we have been practicing intensively over the last few months, should also apply to the use of plastics. In the absence of any certainty as to the long-term harmlessness of plastic waste, let's keep only the essential plastics and get rid of the others... In the hope that the quantity still used will not exceed the dose that our planet and our organisms will be able to manage without suffering too much.
If plastics have extraordinary properties, if they are indispensable for certain uses, let's not forget that we have favored them above all because they were readily available, inexpensive and we thought they were harmless. Now that we're aware of their dangers, let's take off our "all-plastic" glasses and agree to reinvent ourselves by choosing, wherever possible, materials and objects that are reusable, washable and biodegradable at the end of their life.
This fact-check was produced in partnership with the Journalists and Scientists program at ESJ Lille. _
Nathalie Gontard, Research Director, Professor, Food and Packaging Science, Inrae and Valérie Guillard, Professor, Process Engineering Applied to Life Sciences, Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.