We are a group of students from St.George's School Edgbaston, working in partnership with NCS for our social action project highlighting a worldwide issue of littering, especially the waste created by surgical single-use face masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 100 billion disposable face masks thrown around every month globally - that is over 3 billion face masks thrown on our streets every day. This is a major issue due to the fact that the disposable face masks are non-biodegradable, meaning that they take a long time to decompose; this is very dangerous because the build up of plastic has a major impact on biodiversity.

For these reasons, the use of reusable face masks needs to be encouraged and disposable face mask recycling bins need to be introduced. The use of reusable face masks would reduce the amount of waste generated every day and the introduction of disposable face mask recycling bins would help tackle the issue of littering.