DON’T feel useless while on home quarantine. There are so many things we can do beneficial not only to our household members but to Mother Earth, such as cutting down on trash produced and disposed at home.
While the volume of commercial waste has declined as expected due to the closure of most establishments in a bid to keep the contagion in check, the amount of household waste may increase with more people staying at home, consuming more perishables, or ordering ready-to-eat food wrapped in single-use packaging.
Preventing and reducing the generation of household garbage during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak will yield a number of benefits for human health and the environment such as the following: protecting residents and waste workers from being exposed to disease-causing germs; depriving disease-carrying pests such as mosquitoes and rats of places to breed and live; avoiding the disposal of useful resources that can be repaired, reused, recycled or composted; minimizing single-use plastic packaging waste; reducing greenhouse gases formed in disposal sites, such as methane from food and yard waste, that contributes to climate change; and preventing the leakage of waste and chemical pollutants into the marine ecosystems that can threaten aquatic life.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of separating discards as a key measure to control potential coronavirus infection of formal and informal waste workers who often handle waste with minimal protective masks, gloves, and garments. While the coronavirus is transmitted mainly from person to person through respiratory droplets, it is also possible for a person to get infected by touching contaminated surfaces or objects and then touching his mouth, nose or eyes. This is why we need to be extra careful on how used face masks, tissues and wipes are disposed of, which are often mixed with other trash and collected by unprotected waste workers.
So yes, we appeal to each and every household to take concrete steps to avoid the production of garbage. We need to reduce what we throw away in normal and even in abnormal times.
