COVID 19 from Pandemic to Environmental Litter Pollution: Insights from Turkey

Abstract

There has been a great challenge for many countries worldwide as to how to deal with COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Countries have adopted strict measures such as lockdown, social distancing, and use of disinfection, masks and gloves in their maneuvers to contain the pandemic. Consequently, the use of masks and gloves resulted in serious environmental problems. This paper explores the attitudes towards used facemasks and gloves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Primary data were collected through an online survey and a multinomial regression model was used to determine the factors affecting the individuals’ attitudes towards used facemasks. The logistic regression estimates showed that the sex, age, the marital status, the level of monthly income of the respondents, whether the respondent reuse or not facemask, the way the respondents obtain facemasks, the average number of facemasks used per week and the respondent awareness of the challenges posed by used facemask predicted the individuals’ attitudes towards used facemasks. Consequently, health sector policy and decision-makers should arise the population awareness towards the various challenges a posed by discarded used facemasks. This could prevent the COVID-19 pandemic to turn into environmental pollution pandemic and reduce the risk of the degradation of the country leisure and recreational places.