260,000 medical masks recycled for furniture, playground material thanks to Ontario college

In the early days of the pandemic, masks and other PPE were hard to find. These days you see them not only in stores, but also discarded along the street — a littering issue that experts are increasingly worried about.

Researchers estimate globally 129 billion masks are discarded every month, amounting to roughly three million masks a minute.

And with masks likely to still play a role in our everyday lives moving forward, figuring out how to combat that extra plastic pollution is imperative.

Last year, Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ont., decided to do something about mask pollution, placing recycling boxes at exits across their campuses.

The college’s sustainability manager Allison Maxted says that so far, 260,000 masks have been recycled.

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“We know that it is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the waste issue,” Maxted told CTV National News. “It was something that we needed to do to recognize the fact that we were creating more waste on our campus over the past couple of years, and we needed to respond to that.”

She said that the idea had actually been submitted by a student at the college, and the college “jumped at the opportunity” to recycle the masks.

“It’s something that I think all of us have been really frustrated with, just seeing masks out in nature, and even if they make it into the garbage, they’re ending up in landfills,” Maxted said.

Through this program, the entire mask is recycled, Maxted explained. The actual mask which covers the mouth is broken down and made into things like composite lumber, and even outdoor furniture. The ear loops, which are made of rubber, are reused to make rubber pellets for children’s playgrounds, and the nose piece is recycled along with other metal products.

Although it may seem gross to some people — old, used masks now acting as park benches — the process breaks down the materials to reuse them in a safe way, Maxted said.

The collection boxes are quarantined for 72 hours at the college before they’re shipped to Terracycle, the private company that recycles them.

“They specialize in recycling hard-to-recycle items, which masks are,” Maxted said, explaining that the combination of materials in them requires extra separation.

The masks are then isolated again at the recycling hub and held there for a period of time before the process begins, which includes high heat to kill any remaining bacteria.

Because masks are not easy to recycle, there’s a cost: Mohawk pays about $220 a bin. But Maxted says it’s worth it.

“We know that we only have one planet and we need to protect it,” she said. “Typically, things that end up in the environment ultimately end up in our oceans. And there’s quite a lot of plastic in our oceans.”

The amount of plastic waste in oceans could triple in the next 20 years, and experts say recycling plastics will play a big part in making sure that doesn’t happen.