DISPOSABLE MEDICAL MASKS WILL BE USED TO MAKE ROADS IN AUSTRALIA

Researchers from Melbourne, Australia have found out that disposable medical masks can be recycled and used as material for road construction. This will solve the global problem of their disposal.

The research is published in Science of The Total Environment. It is noted that over the past year, the production of medical masks has increased at least hundreds of times. Billions of people around the world wear masks, and with the need to change them every few hours, a huge amount of waste material is created.

Scientists have found a way to put the masks to use. They calculated that 3 million medical masks could be used for making a two-lane 1 km road, which is about 93 tons of waste.

Roads can be built with a mixture of construction waste and shredded masks.

The road material becomes more rigid and durable with medical masks added into it. At the same time, it was noted that waste can be used for the construction of sidewalks. It should be added separately that such roads will be 30% cheaper and more durable.

At the moment, according to experts, humanity uses 6.8 billion masks per day. This is a serious environmental problem as 75% of the material gets to the world's oceans and landfills.