Watch out – there's a danger of infection! But: what are we supposed to do with the rubber gloves?

In the current corona crisis, politicians and scientists recommend that we are particularly cautious and keep an appropriate distance away from each other. There is no longer any real dispute among experts to what extent wearing rubber gloves and a face mask when out in public helps to protect one's own health and the health of others and to avoid infection. Many people are nevertheless convinced that they can protect themselves against SARS-CoV-2 with disposable gloves made from polymer materials and with a face mask that is polymer-coated on the inside – like knights in armour. But what happens when the "confrontation" is over and the "armour" is taken off? Knights take off their metal exoskeleton and have their servants clean it. Rubber gloves and face masks are, however, designed to be used just once, so that they land – or should land – in the garbage can.

It is the same everywhere: our attitude as consumers is reflected to some extent around supermarkets as well as on the approach roads, hard shoulders, pavements and grass verges near them. Not completely, but partially. What is apparent here is one of less attractive sides of how we as a society act. Opened food and consumer goods packaging, bags, bottles, cans, some of them made of glass, others made of paper and board, some of them coated with film, many of them made of plastic – and all of them thoughtlessly dropped on the ground. This kind of environmental pollution is known by the general term of "municipal waste". Littering the streets is evidently an accepted phenomenon – we live with it. In my town, it takes quite a long time until litter is removed from the streets. It is rare for street sweeping vehicles to get really close to the curb, because there are always cars in the way. I have never seen or noticed any road sweepers, who I imagine to be men in overalls who clean the pavements equipped with a broom and a shovel like in old French films, in our neighbourhood.

It is also rare for me to see passers-by stopping to bend down and pick up a plastic bag that is blowing around and put it in a waste bin. I understand that sometimes. Because dogs have urinated on the bag or whatever, while it is often the case that a waste bin is not even in sight. A thin, elderly man with a full beard and two dogs lives around the corner from me. It doesn’t bother him. He is a friendly but shy man. The dogs, both of which are already pretty old, are not actually his. He took them in when they needed a home. The dogs are not beautiful – on the contrary, in fact. But that does not appear to bother the man either. He has a bicycle with a large basket on the front, in which one of the dogs always sits, while the other one trots along slowly, generally some way behind. The basket sometimes has glass and paper waste or other litter in it as well that the man has picked up off the ground and collected. I meet very few people like him who notice the litter around them and who are interested in what is going on "down there".

I do, however, meet quite a few people every day. I myself have a dog who has to go out at least twice a day. To get some exercise and to do his business. And, of course, to enable me to get some exercise too. Exercise is important. I am becoming particularly aware of this now, at a time when there are so many restrictions on our freedom of movement. As a general rule, my dog does not do his business on the pavement. He prefers some privacy. Instinctively. He looks for a place in the undergrowth. I don't like to see dog turds on the pavement. Recently, they have been lying around all over the place on the pavement outside my house, as though they fell out of the backside of a dog that was being pulled along on a tight leash by its owner. It's a good thing that there are plastic bags that can be used to make dog turds disappear from view. It is also a good thing when the bags really are used. What is annoying is if they are ditched by the side of the road or thrown into the bushes after they are used. 

Fortunately, there are people who make a regular event of cleaning up public areas and collecting rubbish. A group of idealists gets together, who then look for more people to join them and help getting rid of litter. Anyone who clears up other people's muck has to be either very idealistic or paid very well. Those whose job it is to deal with other people's waste include dustmen, who carry out a recognised trade in Germany with good career prospects that involves an official apprenticeship. I don't think that any of the group of people who organised the clean-up in our area was actually trained to do the job. They were impressively good at it even so.

They recently issued an appeal, attaching leaflets to trees in the park and to the railings of a little bridge, encouraging passers-by to join them and support the cause: cleanliness is next to godliness, the saying goes, and clearing things up can be fun, while strengthening group identity at the same time. I don't know how successful the campaign was. But whenever the group, that drank tea and shared homemade cookies during the breaks, has been in action, everything looks really clean and tidy afterwards. No more litter is to be seen anywhere on the streets, on the pavements and in the parks. Unfortunately, it only takes a few days for the situation to take a turn for the worse; then there is litter everywhere again, with opened food and consumer goods packaging, bags, bottles, cans, some of them made of glass, others made of paper and board, some of them coated with film, many of them made of plastic – and all of them thoughtlessly dropped on the ground. Some litter can be traced to the school neighbourhood. I wonder if they have lessons about waste avoidance, environmental protection and sustainability at schools nowadays?

Since the corona pandemic began, there has been a slight change in street litter. As far as I can remember, changes tend to happen less all of a sudden and more as a gradual process. It has been different this time. More and more examples of two new kinds of disposable packaging materials have started turning up alongside the sweet, chocolate bar, crisp, bread and roll packaging: rubber gloves and face masks. Many of these gloves are now to be seen lying on the ground, looking a bit like the victims of accidents with strangely twisted fingers. The people who had been wearing them seem to have had little experience in taking rubber gloves off properly and certainly didn't know how to dispose of them correctly. They in particular lacked the ability to avoid contamination with the virus that the gloves were being worn to prevent contact with. Because it adheres to the outside of the gloves and is transferred to the wearer in its entirety unless one is careful when removing them. In the meantime, gloves can be seen lying around everywhere, outside the entrance to supermarkets, while I noticed a whole pile of them in a shopping cart left on a parking lot. Thoroughly disgusting! They are in the gutter, on electricity junction boxes, in the hedge of the neighbour to the left, on the grass in the front garden of the neighbour to the right, in the bushes at the bus stop, between the bicycle stands at the train station, in the fence of the children's playground, in trees and bushes by the side of the road. Rubber gloves – and, more recently, face masks too – can be found everywhere. It doesn't bear thinking what bacteria are crawling all over them after they have collected and multiplied in sweaty hands and breath moisture. And: how effective are these devices, that are supposed to stop the virus spreading, really?

Scientists claim to have proved that simple face masks that can be bought or ones that are sewn at home are not capable of stopping the corona virus at all. Korean research scientists recently found out that someone suffering from a Covid-19 infection was even able to cough the virus through the mask. Simply because not all masks are equally good. Perhaps it does depend on how many barriers of a blend of polypropylene and polyethylene were applied to the inside of the mask. Proper operation masks work really well, but they are in short supply and should be reserved for medical staff who are in urgent need of them. There is no alternative: anyone who wants to avoid infection, should keep an appropriate distance away.

I look at the rubber gloves on the ground from a distance and am disturbed by how thoughtless we can be. While I am astonished when I, for example, pass a fenced-in plot of land that belongs to the railway company on my walks. Every conceivable relict of our consumption-driven society can be found there: bottles, food packaging, little bags in which drugs were supplied, a broken fire extinguisher, CD cases, an empty wallet, the hose of a shower attachment, a kitchen chair finished with imitation leather. I feel a bit like I am in an open-air museum that is dedicated to the special achievements of our era.

I can't stop thinking about the rubber gloves. How is it possible that we as a society were getting so upset about environmental pollution by microplastic not that long ago? About how animals in the water, on land and in the air confuse plastic bags for food, eat them and then die of hunger with full stomachs? How have we managed to forget so quickly that we are destroying the whole basis of our existence if we thoughtlessly drop litter that pollutes the water we drink, the soil that gives us food and the air we breathe and that in the course of time will probably come back to haunt us, for instance as a little extra in the seafood we eat? How much effort has in the meantime been made by so many different people to stop environmental pollution? And then we have to watch how personal protection equipment that is meant to increase our own safety is thoughtlessly dropped on the ground – where it can put other creatures at risk?!

More than 35 international corporations and companies in the plastics and rubber industry have joined forces in the "Alliance to End Plastic Waste", with the aim of developing new ways and efficient solutions to reduce plastic waste in the environment. The industry that has faced increasing criticism as the source of dramatic environmental pollution is facing its responsibility and is stepping on the gas. An about-turn is rarely achieved when acting alone, however. What is needed is comprehensive support, from consumers and users as well. It will be difficult to achieve the aim unless everyone contributes. The industry is, for example, working on new plastics too – ones that are produced not from fossil fuels but from environmentally sound renewable resources. The industry is doing research into better formulations, into a reduction in the number of different types of plastics and into processes that help to recycle recovered plastics into feedstock that is no different from new raw materials, i.e. with which it is possible to manufacture products of the same or higher quality. This process is known as "upcycling", while the opposite is called "downcycling".

It has to be admitted that all the efforts made so far to turn recovered plastics into new plastics of comparable quality have generally been thwarted wherever plastic blends or multicomponent systems have been involved rather than monomaterials. The best form of recycling that is possible in these cases is energy generation; recycling to produce new materials is not feasible, while "upcycling" is out of the question. In view of a number of promising research projects that are being carried out by the industry and universities, it can, however, be assumed that it will be possible in future to recycle recovered plastics in such a way that the high-molecular polymers they contain can be broken down by chemical means ("chemical recycling") into minute chemical components under the influence of energy and can subsequently be combined again to form whatever new products are required, in a process not unsimilar to the Lego brick principle.

Standard processes today produce a solid granulate of a quality that is not comparable to a product made from virgin material. For this reason, it can only be used to a limited extent in the manufacturing of high-quality products. Experts predict that the recycling rate for plastics could be tripled to 50 per cent by 2030 if established recycling processes were combined with chemical recycling. The kind of in-depth understanding of the material and the technology that only the plastics and rubber industry possesses in liaison with research institutes is essential to find solutions to the assignments that need to be tackled. Meeting the challenges requires experienced experts and motivated new recruits, to whom the industry is in a position to offer jobs with attractive long-term prospects and good career opportunities, as the plastics training project "kai" demonstrated convincingly at K 2019 too.

In view of the fact that every crisis ends at some point, it is vital to remember: an intact environment can only be maintained if we all pull together. Every single individual, both idealists and experts who know all about plastics, is needed in order to make a success of this. The plastics and rubber industry has attractive job prospects and very good career opportunities to offer. All the relevant information can be found here (more information). Joining others who are committed to helping in the creation of a better world: what better motivation could there possibly be?