Environmental impacts of COVID-19 on Victoria, Australia, witnessed two waves of Coronavirus

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic not only has created a global health crisis but also has dramatic effects on the environment. To fight the spread of Coronavirus, governments imposed social distancing policies, which caused negative and positive impacts on the environment. Victoria, the second-most populated state in Australia, was hit by two waves of COVID-19. During the second wave of the pandemic, Victoria, especially Melbourne, experienced one of the most stringent and longest lockdowns globally. In this study, the changes in mobility trends, traffic, air pollution, noise pollution, and waste generation during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in Victoria are evaluated and compared. It was observed that the pandemic had both positive and negative impacts on the environment. During the second wave of the pandemic in Victoria, the mobility trends of public transport hubs, retail and recreation venues, and workplaces experienced a significant drop in movements at respective values of 85%, 83%, and 76% compared to the period of 5 weeks from 3 January to 6 February 2020. PM 2.5 levels were lower by 23% at Alphington and 24% at Footscray from 16 March to 1 May 2020 compared with the average PM 2.5 levels in the past 4 years. It was estimated that the respective daily generations of used face masks during the first wave and second wave of the pandemic in Victoria were approximately 104 and 160 tons.

Characterizing the interruption-recovery patterns of urban air pollution under the COVID-19 lockdown in China

“…Research focusing on South Asia critically investigated lockdown effects toward concentrations of air pollutants and found that a significant reduction of air quality index (AQI) was observed over most polluted ranked cities like Delhi, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Colombo due to the total shutdown [ [20] , [21] , [22] , [23] ]. Similar results have also been found at the all-countries level [ 24 ] such as Australia [ 25 ], UK [ 26 ], Italy [ 27 ], Spain [ 28 ], and Brazil [_Nakada_and_Urban_2020]. Above all, existing research mainly focuses on the air pollution change during the earlier stage of the COVID-19.…”

Impacts of COVID-19 and pandemic control measures on public transport ridership in European urban areas – The cases of Vienna, Innsbruck, Oslo, and Agder

“…In Australia, Beck and Hensher evaluated the effects of working from home on commuting travel behavior, concluding that “working from home will be a key determinant on commuting behavior” Beck and Hensher (2020, p. 16) . Another Australian study presented the impact of the second wave of the pandemic on human mobility, showing a 73–85 percent reduction of traffic in PT hubs in the cases considered ( Boroujeni et al, 2021 ). For the post-pandemic period, an estimation on the number of daily public transport trips to be serviced after COVID-19 is given by the ITF/OECD (2020) ; in some cities, teleworking was anticipated to cause a 30 percent reduction in trips.…”

SARS-CoV-2 variants and environmental effects of lockdowns, masks and vaccination: a review

“…Protective measures have a direct or indirect environmental impact (Boroujeni et al 2021 ) and Fig. 5 shows how these measures affect the environment (Rume and Islam 2020 ).…”

“…Personal protective equipment (PPE) is now required or recommended in nearly every country to help combat the global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 (Boroujeni et al 2021 ). The waste management system has been overwhelmed by single-use plastics, including massive amounts of PPE (Klemeš et al 2020 ).…”