OKLAHOMA CITY – During a recent visit to Electra, Texas, a small city just over the Red River from Oklahoma, this reporter got a thorough and enlightening tour of the Crooked Creek Golf Course with the manager, Dale Huley.
As Huley drove around the course, he would periodically stop the golf cart and lean over to pick up a discarded face mask blowing around in the middle of the fairway.
“I really hate that,” he said. “It’s a problem.”
And the issue of casually discarded PPE (personal protective equipment) waste – face masks, gloves, gowns and other protective gear – is not just in Texas. It’s a vexing problem in Oklahoma and across the nation. In fact, reports seem to indicate COVID mask litter is a global problem.
In Boca Raton, Florida, this week, the city council is considering an ordinance that would result in someone who improperly discards PPE receiving a $250 fine and being made to pick up trash in that city.
In the Philippines, a fragile coral reef is littered with cast-off masks, gloves and protective shields. And in Canada, federal officials have sounded the alarm on the shocking amount of PPE and medical waste – most of it not recyclable or biodegradable – that’s filling landfills and waterways in America’s neighbor to the north.
Seeing the problem for what it is, the United Nations warned last year, according to The Hill, that “75 percent of the used masks, as well as other pandemic-related garbage, will end up in landfills or in oceans.” It affects marine life, animals on land and the quality of life for all creatures, including humans – the ones who are using and discarding PPE.
SOONER EFFORTS
Dean Henderson, with the City of Oklahoma City Solid Waste Department, said that on a particularly windy day recently he saw “between two and three hundred (face masks) flying around.”
In areas of the city he refers to as illegal dumping “hot spots,” the amount of PPE waste is quite high and the city has to send out teams to clean those areas with picks, rakes and shovels.
And during a drive around downtown Oklahoma City, it was evident that Covid-19 masks were everywhere, taken away in the strong winds, not unlike plastic grocery bags that often get caught in trees.
Erin Hatfield, communications director for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, said DEQ does not regulate the improper disposal of face masks and other PPE, as it would simply be in the category of littering.
Hatfield suggested that DEQ will likely begin using their social media platforms to launch a PPE-specific campaign that points out the problem of improperly placed PPE.
She also noted that in a state that gets high winds in the spring, such as what Oklahomans are experiencing, people may try to dispose of the masks properly, only to have them blow away in the wind.
“And in my neighborhood,” Hatfield said, “We have a pond behind our house, and with stormwater runoff we can get all sorts of trash in the water.”
The Environmental Protection Agency is aware of the problem. Joe Hubbard, spokesman for EPA Region 6, based in Dallas, Texas, said the federal agency “supports state and local efforts to ensure these materials are properly disposed of in landfills.”
Hubbard said the EPA’s stormwater permitting program works to reduce stormwater pollutants, including PPE trash, from entering waterways.
“Existing National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System stormwater permits can include provisions that specifically reduce trash through actions like pollution prevention/good housekeeping, public education/outreach, preventing illegal dumping and public involvement,” Hubbard related in an email to the Southwest Ledger.
Elaborating on the issue of trash like PPE getting in surface waters, Hubbard added that the EPA’s Trash Free Waters is a voluntary partnership program and EPA “works collaboratively with a variety of public and private partners to reduce and prevent plastic waste from reaching surface waters, or capturing such waste once it is in waterways.”
Calls to the City of Lawton’s Solid Waste Collection and Mayor Stan Booker were not returned as of press time. Additionally, the Ledger left a message with Johnson Bridgwater of the Oklahoma chapter of the Sierra Club; the call was not returned.
CLEAN-UP EFFORTS
But not all is grim on the clean-up front. The conservation organization Keep America Beautiful and its Oklahoma chapter, Keep Oklahoma Beautiful, are leading the Great American Cleanup. Jeanette Nance with Keep Oklahoma Beautiful said their KAB affiliate plans to have a continual clean-up from this month on into May.
Nance offers the following suggestions for folks who plan to help Keep Oklahoma Beautiful and pick up litter, which can include germ-saturated face masks and more:
• Do not use your bare hands. Wear thick rubber or leather gloves.
• Consider venturing out with only immediate family members or with a neighbor or two. Practice physical distancing and keep 6 feet apart.
• If accompanied by children, make sure they are closely supervised.
• Use a trash grabber tool or even a set of old kitchen tongs you don’t use for food any longer.
• Hose down gloves and tools and/or disinfect after each use.
• Place the trash you collect in a dumpster, if you can.
For more ideas on how to keep Oklahoma clean and litter-free, go to www.keepoklahomabeautiful.com.