Now local residents are being urged to switch to re-usable masks – and potentially save themselves nearly £200. Borough residents are estimated to be using around 150,000 dingle-use masks every day – and many of them are just being dumped or accidentally falling out of people’s pockets. Dudley waste company TradeWaste say their patrols are seeing more and more discarded masks littering the streets. Many then get blown away into woods and streams or rivers. “The scale of the problem is massive, said TradeWaste’s Charlotte Green. “Sightings are increasingly common now.” Patrols are finding an average of one mask every 60 metres, but especially around shops.
Litter pickers in Basingstoke are seeing a huge increase in the number of used disposable face masks found dumped during their patrols, according to one local business. And they estimate the number of single-use masks being used in Basingstoke has reached 64,084 per day. “The scale of the problem of carelessly dumped disposable face masks is massive – residents of Basingstoke use 64,084 single use plastic masks a day and sadly some of these are being dropped, or simply fall from people’s pockets”, said Charlotte Green, of Basingstoke-based firm TradeWaste.co.uk. The number of disposable face masks that will be used across the UK in 2021 has been calculated at 19.5 billion.
Liverpool s face mask usage reaches 356,000 a day as litter problem plagues city
It’s reported that litter pickers across the country are finding one mask for every 60 metres they patrol
Updated
Little picker Max Ratcliffe, who is 6, said he was shocked by how many masks he spotted
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