Protective Masks Recycling
Protective masks are one of the hygiene supplies. It is generally refers to the product which been wore in the mouth and nose position to filter the air. The protective masks can block harmful gases, odors and droplets from entering the wearer’s mouth and nose. During the COVID-19 outbreak, face mask is becoming a common sight all over the world and the demand is overwhelming. But most commonly used protective masks are disposable. Is it possible to recycle these huge amount of masks? Protective masks recycling really makes great sense.
What are protective masks?
The protective masks can be divided into surgical masks and non-surgical masks. The non-surgical masks are also popular as the civil sanitary masks. Surgical masks are usually made of several layers of nonwovens. Surgical masks consists of mask body and tighten belt, which divide the mask into inner, middle and outer layers. The material for inner layer is close skin material, such as common health gauze or non-woven, etc.. The middle layer is the isolate filter layer, normally made of superfine melt-blown polypropylene fiber. The outer layer most commonly used protective masks are disposable. Is it possible to recycle these huge amount of masks? most commonly used protective masks are disposable. Is it possible to recycle these huge amount of masks? most commonly used protective masks are disposable. Is it possible to recycle these huge amount of masks? is the antibacterial layer. The out layer normally is made of non-woven or thin polypropylene melt-blown material.
Protective masks recycling
Protective masks recycling aims to separate the useful substances from the used or waste protective masks and then physically or mechanically processed into articles for reuse. How to recycle the protective masks?
The protective masks are disposable products. Compared with other general waste like cardboard, plastic, etc,. it is a very special waste since part of them belong to the medical waste area. That part of the masks should be recycled strictly by implementing the standard of medical waste recycling. The masks need to be sorted and collected in the special yellow garbage bag for medical waste and then sealed. We also need to stick a label on the bag for tracking. Then the bags will be transferred by the medical garbage truck to the plant of incinerators. These marks are usually been incinerated because they may contain harmful substances such as bacteria.
For the civil sanitary masks, we can treat them as general waste and throw them into the household garbage collection containers. As we all know that, the marks are made of non-woven fabric and these non-woven fabric are recyclable materials. But still recycling of these non-woven fabric must follow strict procedures. The disinfection is a very important procedure. Also baling and shredding should help to improve the recycling efficiency.
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