Waste, Unmasked

The environmental cost of keeping a pandemic at bay

- Zabrina Lo

The Soko Islands, a largely uninhabited archipelago to the south of Lantau, represent one of Hong Kong’s last pristine areas. However, in February this year, they began to show the signs of a rising pandemic when tangled, jellyfish-like objects were found washed ashore by environmental groups that monitor the islands. On one of his inspections, Gary Stokes, founder of conservation organisation OceansAsia, was dismayed to find hundreds of used face masks of all types and colours, including the N95 version and the more common single-use surgical styles.

Twice a month, Stokes and his team conduct plastic pollution research projects in different areas of Hong Kong, which involves microplastics surveys and analysing rubbish that has accumulated at beaches from Discovery Bay to Peng Chau and Chi Ma Wan. Global publicity around plastic waste in recent years had started to change consumption habits in Hong Kong, but Stokes noticed that the pandemic was causing any progress to backslide.

“The more noticeable thing [lately] has been the constitution of the trash,” Stokes says, speaking in August. “We’re seeing a lot more takeaway utensils, straws and things we had actually started to see reducing when we were cutting back on our plastic consumption.”