Mountain of PPE to be Recycled into Plastic Bags

Once the global COVID-19 pandemic kicked off, the waste industry was forced to deal with new streams of waste, including what to do with PPE.

The new and unexpected abundance of PPE created challenges for waste streams as the material were new to a lot of places and people were not educated on how to recycle the equipment. Now, there’s a mountain of PPE in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. However, the District’s council has a plan for the trash mound.

In the coming weeks, New Forest is going to begin removing PPE from the mountain and the equipment will be recycled into plastic bags. The New Forest District Council says the material is located at the Little Testwood Farm in Calmore.

A spokesperson from the district council said it carried out a routine inspection as part of its annual inspection regime on April 4.

"This inspection revealed that a large quantity of PPE was being stored on the land in contravention of the caravan site license conditions. The council, in its licensing capacity, has requested that the stored items be removed from the land,” said the spokesperson from the district council.

"Subsequent inspections have been carried out by Hampshire County Council and the Environment Agency. All the material is packaged and palletized and is due to be removed from the site for processing and recycling into plastic bags over the coming weeks. The Environment Agency will continue to carry out further enquires as to source of the material and how it came to be present on the land.”

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