The growing consumption of protective masks against Covid-19, whether surgical or disposable, is forcing communities to set up recycling channels, in particular by turning to the few companies that are able to transform this waste into 'a new genre.
What to do with our protective masks against Covid-19 after using them?
Whether surgical or fabric masks, washable ten or twenty times, more and more initiatives are emerging to recycle them correctly.
The few companies that offer it are inundated with requests, and local communities are trying to set up channels.
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Thus, the metropolis of Tours, with its 300,000 inhabitants, generates around 80 tonnes of mask waste per month.
Collectors have just been installed: two transparent tubes, one for surgical masks, the other for fabric ones.
With a goal for Wilfried Schwartz, President of Tours Métropole: to make the recycling of used masks a daily gesture.
"For now, 100 collection points have been set up in the metropolis of Tours, but we are going to install more in the busiest places of the territory, so that a real habit can be created among our fellow citizens", explains- he with Europe 1.
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Companies overwhelmed by demands
At this point, very few companies are recycling masks.
This is why the Plaxtil SME, based in Châtellerault, is crumbling under demand: big names from the CAC 40, schools, town halls ... Olivier Civil, its co-founder, has just set up a branch in Poitiers.
"Once recycled, the masks will be transformed into protractors, squares, double decimeters which will be distributed to young schoolchildren in Poitiers", he assures us.
The challenge now is to find a large-scale technological solution.
To achieve this, the Ile-de-France region is going to launch a call for expressions of interest with one million euros for each innovative project.