COVID trash is adding to Bay Pollution

Unlike sewage from sinks and bathrooms in our homes and businesses, stormwater from streets isn’t treated anywhere in the Bay Area except the city of San Francisco. So the gutters and highway shoulders full of cigarette butts, discarded batteries, snack bags, straws and other single-use plastic items wash into the Bay where they choke wildlife, smother marshes, poison the water and enter the food chain.

Plastic doesn’t biodegrade — it lasts in the environment for centuries. This year, COVID makes the problem worse, because we’re all generating more trash that includes rubber gloves, face masks, Styrofoam and plastic from takeout food. Masks and gloves are crucial tools to protect against the spread of disease, but careless disposal is flooding our environment with COVID debris.

During September’s statewide coastal cleanup day, volunteers found so much PPE that organizers had to create a whole new category for masks and gloves in the trash inventory — those were among the most frequently found items, ranking up there with plastic cups and beverage lids.

And plastic bags also rocketed back to the top five most retrieved items that day. They had declined steadily for several years after Bay Area communities and then the entire state banned giveaway plastic bags at grocery and other retail stores. Gov. Gavin Newsom paused the bag prohibition for two months early in the pandemic because of concerns that reusable bags might spread coronavirus, and the Bay is paying the price. 

Economic hard times also have swelled the homeless population, and many encampments are near streams and parks where trash gets into the water. Some cities have seen a big growth in illegal dumping of trash this year. And many volunteer groups that collect litter in neighborhoods, on beaches and at shoreline and creek cleanups are sidelined because of safety restrictions that limit gatherings.

Highways and state roads maintained by Caltrans are one of the worst sources of trash entering creeks and the Bay, because that state agency has been out of compliance with stormwater pollution rules for many years. In fact, California’s clean water regulators slapped a cease and desist order on Caltrans two years ago to stem the flow of trash. But anyone driving the Bay Area’s freeways can see the trash is worse right now, not better.

What’s the solution? Of course people should stop littering, but even well-intentioned disposal can spill trash onto streets from overflowing garbage cans that aren’t emptied often enough and lack lids, or from truck loads that aren’t covered. With more rain coming, Caltrans and cities must accelerate efforts to clean up streets and road shoulders before trash goes down the storm drains and into the Bay.

We also need to reduce single-use plastic packaging that generates so much trash in the first place — filling up dumps, consuming energy and polluting our waters and land with toxic materials that last for centuries.

So mask up to protect everyone’s health, then dispose of used PPE properly and protect the Bay we all love.

David Lewis is executive director of Save The Bay.