Friday, July 30, 2021

Pollution Impact of Covid-19

Everything seems to be a trade-off between the immediate and the long-term. Low interest rates? Necessary to keep the economy from falling into a recession today...but, on the other hand, long-term low rates mean growing (impossibly large?) liabilities in the future as today's savings can't compound as much. Now the same type of conundrum seems to apply to the pandemic. Masks are life-savers, and we need(ed) them in the billions...but cheap disposable masks are also pretty bad for the environment, each one taking 450 years to degrade as this chart from the always cool Visual Capitalist shows. And so far 1.6 billion of them ended up in the oceans, making "Mask Pollution" a thing.

Of course, if we don't save society today, there won't be a future to protect tomorrow...so it's not really a choice.

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