CS-4
COVID-19 & Climate Change
Solutions
Finding solutions
throughout the current policies
As human activities decreased due to COVID-19, we could see how human have impacted the Earth. Now the pandemic is over and daily life has been restored, it is impossible to shut down as before.
However, it is necessary to suggest various solutions to reduce the man-made damage on the Earth. They could also guide the direction for policies that are currently carrying out or to be implemented.
By using the fine dust seasonal management system, the atmosphere pollution problem could be improved. Also, the additional pollution to the hydrosphere could be reduced by international cooperation, for example, Osaka Blue Ocean Vision. Human behavior is also important for this, such as participating in beach garbage collecting campaigns or not incinerating the trash illegally.
In Korea, the government is planning to conduct carbon net-zero by the policy, Korean New Deal.
How to address the negative impacts of COVID-19
There are some methods that we find to address the negative impact of COVID-19 on the environment. Based on these, it would be better to try to minimize the negative impact from now on.
1) There is a way to solve the problem of increasing air pollutant emissions due to increased medical waste. First, develop technical control of waste incinerating facilities. This control can reduce the load in the process of handling waste, consequently decreasing the amount of dust in the air. Second, use other methods instead of burning to treat waste. We can also reduce emissions of air pollutants by using other methods such as pyrolysis, recycling and landfill.
2) Using waste masks in other fields can solve the problem of increasing microplastics in the ocean. The suggested method is to make a plastic chair by heat treating polypropylene, the main component of the mask. And there is a method of increasing concrete strength by mixing polypropylene with concrete aggregates.
