Photo: Jievani Weerasinghe | Unsplash
A new recycling program that diverts thousands of kilograms of medical masks, gowns and gloves out of landfills has been rolled out at 18 hospitals across the Canadian province of British Columbia. Marianne Dawson, a sustainability adviser at the Provincial Health Services Authority, said staff began running a pilot program with the Health Ministry in 2023 and, because it was successful, the government continued to fund it. The health authority plans to have recycling bins for medical personal protective equipment (PPE) at all hospitals in the province. The use of PPE, particularly single-use masks, increased during COVID-19, but, while keeping people safe, it also created a lot of waste. Over a year — from March 2024 to March 2025 — the program has recycled just over 66,000 kilograms of used PPE. “It’s a significant amount that I think is close to 200 homes’ worth of waste being diverted,” Dawson said. PPE has been considered difficult to recycle because it’s made up of polypropylene, which isn’t accepted in traditional recycling streams. The project required some innovation from the industry; Vitacore, which created the country’s first PPE recycling program, made the equipment to recycle the masks they produce. Once recycled, the material has been used to make car parts, plastic lumber and used in concrete filler.
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