Dead Mask Project
Dead Mask Project
Fighting the toxic legacy of the Covid pandemic
You may remember that in our August newsletter, I announced the launch of something called the “Dead Mask Project” before the end of 2022. Thank you to all of my subscribers for your patience since my last newsletter at the end of October as my team and I have worked on this urgent new initiative.
Although international publicity and fundraising for Dead Mask will not begin officially until January, the website and a GoFundMe campaign are live online now. Here is a link to the website, or click the image below. We can take credit card donations on the website or at GoFundMe.
There are many sources of pandemic related toxic medical waste besides face masks, including surgical plastic face shields, plastic gloves, syringes, nasal swabs, disposable surgical gowns, plastic goggles and hand sanitizer bottles.
However, face masks are the biggest contamination problem. After a global pandemic was declared by the WHO in March 2020, an estimated 52 billion face masks were sold in just the remaining nine months of 2020. More than 1.56 billion tons of mask waste are calculated to have entered the world’s oceans within the first 12 months of the pandemic.
These discarded masks are a threat to ocean life and birds worldwide and a major source of toxic ocean pollution, already accounting for 7% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Face masks produced 5,500 tons of solid waste plastic pollution in just the first year of the pandemic. Because the overwhelming majority of disposable surgical masks are made with plastic and polymers, average time required for biodegradation is 450 years.
The long journey of discarded masks starts in their form as solid waste on land. It continues over weeks and months with billions of masks wending their way from land through urban and rural drainage systems or leaching into groundwater, with this wave of solid and chemical pollution eventually flowing into the earth’s watersheds – rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.
Tragically, several billion tons of toxic mask waste have already been deposited in the world’s oceans. Our mission is to generate relentless publicity and political pressure that draws attention to the urgent need for global solutions to this problem.
Dead Mask Project is by design a political noise machine. Whether you are pro-mask or anti-mask or just agnostic, this is an urgent global problem that everyone should be able to support. We are all “stakeholders” when it comes to cleaning up this horrific mess. We will shut up when real solutions are forthcoming.
Our initial budget estimate to cover costs to date and to get the project off the ground with non-stop publicity and lobbying in the first half of 2023 is only $25K to $30K.
YOU CAN HELP!
FIRST, subscribe, share and donate to Reimagining Politics Magazine.
SECOND, sign up, share and DONATE on the website.
You can also contact us via the Dead Mask website. Once again, here are the options on Substack.