“You need to dispose of them somewhere safe”: Covid-19, masks, and the pit latrine in Malawi and South Africa

Abstract

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has generated an immense amount of potentially infectious waste, primarily face masks, which require rapid and sanitary disposal in order to mitigate the spread of the disease. Yet, within Africa, large segments of the population lack access to reliable municipal solid waste management (SWM) services, both complicating the disposal of hazardous waste, and public health efforts. Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork, including 96 semi-structured interviews, across four different low-income communities in Blantyre, Malawi and Durban, South Africa, the purpose of this article is to respond to a qualitative gap on mask disposal behaviours, particularly from within low-income and African contexts. Specifically, our purpose was to understand what behaviours have arisen over the past year, across the two disparate national contexts, and how they have been influenced by individual risk perceptions, established traditional practice, state communication, and other media sources. Findings suggest that the wearing of cloth masks simplifies disposal, as cloth masks can (with washing) be reused continuously. However, in communities where disposable masks are more prevalent, primarily within Blantyre, the pit latrine had been adopted as the most common space for ‘safe’ disposal for a used mask. We argue that this is not a new behaviour, however, and that the pit latrine was already an essential part of many low-income households SWM systems, and that within the Global South, the pit latrine fulfils a valuable and uncounted solid waste management function, in addition to its sanitation role.

A cross-sectional survey on the effectiveness of public health campaigns for changing knowledge, attitudes, and practices in Kenyan informal settlements during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The preference of disposable masks will clearly raise environmental issues in relation to their safe disposal. As highlighted previously, the environmental impact of reusable cloth masks are significantly lower than disposable masks [57,58], particularly in low resource environments that lack clear policies and facilities for solid waste disposal [59]. Of those who continued to wear a reusable cloth mask, we found a 10% increase in the proportion of subjects who washed their masks every day.…”

Disposable Face-Mask Waste Management and Assessment Through Willingness to Pay and SWOT Framework in Post COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This is because disposable mask waste contains chemical compounds that can interfere with polluting the environment [32] so that the existence of marine biota is threatened, even the diversity of plants in the sea is also threatened, and in the end all aspects of the environment are disturbed in balance, meaning that the disposal of mask waste by the community is not disposed of in its place. Another case states that the management of mask waste, apart from being thrown away, is simply burning it [33]. Burning disposable mask waste is not recommended because it causes air pollution and is carcinogenic considering that mask waste is made from plastic.…”

Assessment of the awareness about COVID-19 and the following-up of guidelines for biomedical wastes in Jaipur city

“…Waste can be recovered rather than disposed off based on the 3Rs idea, which stands for reduce, recycle, and reuse (ref 2). Reusability options were suggested, such as use of cloth masks repetitively after washing, employing dry heat pasteurization to disinfect N95 respirators and surgical facemasks, to reduce the amount of BMW (Kalina et al 2022 ). Additionally, in order to decrease the amount of masks that have been discarded, these were hydrothermally liquefied into renewable fuel oil while ethanol was also being produced (Xiang et al 2020 ).…”

“…Additionally, in order to decrease the amount of masks that have been discarded, these were hydrothermally liquefied into renewable fuel oil while ethanol was also being produced (Xiang et al 2020 ). These were discarded in the pit latrine disposal system in Morocco (Kalina et al 2022 ). Many nations have strict guidelines and systems in place for properly disposing of waste, such as sorting and disinfecting it first, then leaving it for nine days before sorting to reduce the risk of exposing first-line employees to viruses (Das et al 2021 ).…”