Story by Emma Dannenfelser

As autumn’s peak nears, the U of A campus is blanketed in hundreds of brightly colored leaves.  However, this year, the beautiful array of leaves are joined by piles of discarded face masks.

According to Pat Walker Health Center on campus, masks are required to be always worn when indoors, regardless of vaccination status.  This rule has contributed to maintaining less than 100 COVID-19 cases for much of the fall semester, according to the Pat Walker COVID-19 dashboard. 

However, lowered COVID-19 cases come at a cost. Since the beginning of the fall semester, nearly 11,000 masks have been handed out in the Union alone, said Lynne Bell, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs, in a Zoom interview. 

“We estimate around 50 masks per day are being sent to compactor, and in turn, landfills,” Bell said. 

While the university is working hard to distribute masks across the campus, a large part of the problem may be in the student body. 

“It’s more of a respect for property and a campus problem,” said Kevin Shackelford, the construction and maintenance coordinator,in a phone interview. “People don’t realize that someone has to pick them up around campus. It’s a lot of disrespect and, in some cases, just general laziness.”

One factor that could be preventing students from picking up stray masks is fear of contracting COVID-19 from discarded PPE, such as masks and gloves. The Executive Director of Pat Walker Health Center, Mary Alice Serafini, said in a Zoom interview that while that risk is low, it could be preventing students from being willing to help clean up the campus. 

“With COVID information being changed so frequently, I wouldn’t doubt that people are fearful of picking them up,” Serafini said.

COVID-19 particles cannot survive on cloth for more than 48 hours, which means the risk of contracting the virus is low for those who touch used masks, according to a study by the Lancet medical journal (CQ).  

 Another contributing factor to the campus’s influx of mask litter is a severely understaffed grounds crew, Shackelford said.  

“Our grounds crew picks the masks up by hand,” Shackelford said.  “Since we are so understaffed, we aren’t able to keep everything the way we like.”

The masks are a new type of litter, which the crew has yet to create a perfect plan for removal, Shackelford said.

“People’s jobs have been greatly impacted by this type of litter.  It’s incredibly overwhelming,” Serafini said.

While the mask litter across campus is not necessarily a safety concern for students, it does raise concern for the future of the university’s storm drains and flood plans.  

“We find many masks in the drains and, while there haven’t been any issues quite yet, there is certainly a large potential for them to clog up a storm drain,” Shackelford said.

Littered masks clogging up storm drains could result in excess flooding and damage for years to come, Shackelford said.

“Environmentally, they are very harmful,” Serafini said, “it rained recently, and we know for a fact that all of those stray masks were flushed into the water supply.”

Beginning in 2010, the university was faced with a similar problem, but instead of necessary PPE, the issue at hand was discarded cigarette butts. 

The university campaigned to make the U of A a tobacco-free zone due to concerns for second-hand smoke inhalation and thousands of discarded cigarette butts being littered across campus, Serafini said. 

The team also documented how cigarette butts are incredibly harmful to the water supply, which helped them ban tobacco products from campus, Serafini said. 

Another factor for the large amount of mask litter could be a lack of outdoor trash cans on campus, said Olivia Ervin, the associated student government director of sustainability, in a phone interview.

“You can’t throw your mask away inside because you need to be wearing it,” Ervin said.  “There usually isn’t a trash can in the immediate vicinity, so I think we could increase the density of trash cans on campus.”

Last weekend, the U of A associated student government organized a campus clean-up event that focused on picking up mask litter around campus, Ervin said.

The campus clean-up was an effective and easy way for students to contribute to maintaining the campus, Ervin said.

“One solution I’ve thought of is just hosting more of those cleanups, getting people involved and actively helping clean our campus,” Ervin said. “It’s like when you put in a lot of work to clean your kitchen and then you don’t want it to get dirty again. It would make people prouder of our campus.”

Serafini said she hopes the university will create a campaign for students to be more respectful toward the campus.

 “It shouldn’t be confrontational, but let’s be considerate,” ” Serafini said. “This is really just a courtesy thing, because we have a beautiful campus.”