EPA Victoria’s Chief Environmental Scientist is appealing to all Victorians to be the eyes and ears of a scientific program to rid the streets of discarded face masks.

The key to gathering the scientific data is an easy-to-use web-based tool on the EPA Victoria website epa.vic.gov.au/mask-away 

The program is an extension of EPA’s pollution hotline where members of the public can already report all types of pollution, including littering  by calling 1300 EPA VIC (1300 372 842) or providing details online at epa.vic.gov.au/report-pollution/reporting-pollution

“Discarded face masks have gone from a largely unknown litter item to being left behind everywhere,” Professor Mark Patrick Taylor says.

“It’s difficult to quantify just how many used masks are messing up the streets, storm drains, water ways and beaches of Victoria, but they are everywhere.”

“As EPA’s Chief Environmental Scientist, I’m looking to Victorians in every town and suburb to help us identify the mask litter hotspots so EPA and other agencies can design and better target clean up and mitigation efforts to stop the mask pollution,” he said.

The program gives any Victorian who’s sick of binning abandoned masks they’ve found in the street the chance to contribute to prevention programs that will help to stop mask litter from being there in the first place.

These surgical masks are long lasting, they don’t decay easily in the environment and Victorians hate finding them in our stormwater drains, in our streets and washing up on our beaches.  Not only are they unsightly, they are harmful to wildlife and our environment and everyone can contribute to the solution.

“In the meantime, doing the right thing with your own used mask is easy – protect wildlife by pulling the loops off and putting it in a general waste bin,” Professor Taylor said.

EPA will share  data collected from the survey on the EPA website. The data will be used to inform local councils of areas where there is a build up in litter,  allowing for improved programs to tackle the problem.

“It will also help our thinking on new prevention and clean up innovations – scientific data is like that, it can come up with surprising and useful perspectives you didn’t expect,” Prof Taylor said.

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Reviewed 22 April 2022