This is a photograph on Twitter showing coronavirus masks tossed to the curbside with other litter items. It looks horrendous. People are seeing masks on the ground all over the place. Apparently these facemasks were at Guelf, Ontario, Canada. It’s a modern version of the plastic bag and water bottle waste. If humankind can throw something away they do it. It’s ironic that you introduce something new into the world such as facemasks which are necessary nowadays due to Covid-19 and humankind finds a way to abuse the process by creating another hazard out of an existing one.
The general mood is that it is disgusting and despicable and people need to smarten up. I’m sure that the same problem can be found in pretty well any country although there will be countries where it is worse than others. It is certainly a problem in the UK but I’ve not seen the numbers of masks that we see in the picture at the curbside in the UK.
In case you were wondering, the relevance of this to the ethos of the website which is the human-animal relationship is that pollution of all kinds damages the planet which in turn damages wildlife which reflects on the relationship between animals and humans. Humankind is the custodian of the planet. I’m afraid we are not doing a very good job of it.
