One of the most striking and alarming changes of the past year has been our readiness to sacrifice environmental conservation when immediate human health is at stake. As Covid took hold of the world, people who had previously avoided single-use plastics (including myself) unquestioningly adopted masks, plastic packaging, and more readily disposable mindsets. This spoke to how the novelty of threats to our health invoked a more short-sighted, survival-oriented outlook. As the readings mention, cultures of disposability are built on short-term thinking: when presented with the threat of infection, we shift from thinking about how climate change will create more pathogens and disease outbreaks in the long run, into thinking about how we need to protect ourselves in this moment. This was especially clear last spring here in Abu Dhabi: with no scientific basis whatsoever, the few open restaurants were mandated to have only disposable utensils and plates. Along with masks, PPE, and increasing home deliveries, waste multiplied. Gloves are celebrated and required in many places, despite doing nothing to reduce the risk of spreading respiratory particles.
Now that I have been sick with Covid and am quarantining in the designated quarantine building on campus, there is way more plastic in my life than before. This room came supplied with dozens of plastic gloves (I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with them), twelve 1.5-liter water bottles (which I drank all of in the first day); 20+ disposable masks,
The dining hall delivers meals in compostable takeaway boxes, but soup came in plastic-lined cups, and they give plastic “biodegradable” utensils with every meal even though there is cutlery in the room already.
The room came with many small bottles of shampoo and lotion, which may all be thrown out once I get released, since they’ll be considered contaminated.
The container soup came in looks like cardboard, but is lined with plastic.
accumulated plastic waste: 5 produce bags that delivery came in, lots of plastic that linens were wrapped in, plastic utensils, lettuce carton wrapper, soy milk carton, some of the 12 plastic water bottles (the rest I keep refilling and reusing).
When they said “pack your stuff” a significant amount of that was the groceries in my dorm, so some of the plastic is from my lettuce/celery/soy milk.
None of this will be recycled because it’s considered biohazardous– I am supposed to put all waste in a big yellow Biohazard bag and bin outside the door. I’ve been a research assistant in a lab of healthcare sustainability, and conducted one literature review on hospital waste audits and medical waste management and another on the conservation of PPE — so it’s rather ironic and interesting that now I am the source of the biohazardous waste! They said to put waste out each day, but I don’t want to waste the plastic bags: I’m supposed to tie the small black trash bin bag with a zip tie, put it inside a yellow biohazard bag, and then put that in the large yellow trash bin in the hall, so ultimately the waste ends up within three plastic bags. Even though the risk of transmission by fomite object is low, I fully respect and adhere to this despite usually being a staunch anti-purchasing-trash-bags advocate (why buy something for the sole purpose of throwing it in the trash).
hallway is full of hazardous waste bins (even though I was the only one here for a while)
The room came with a lot of plastic, ultimately destined for incinceration
me posing with the biohazard bag because I thought it was ironic/ funny in a sad way
not plastic, but I made a window seat out of the box that my groceries delivery came in (a lot of which is wrapped in plastic)
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