The anti-COVID campaign is creating more greenhouse gases and plastic waste. Governments across the world are frantically trying to vaccinate as many people as possible to bring the coronavirus pandemic to heel — but doing so carries some negative environmental consequences. Everything from the massive freezers used to keep vaccines cold, to the trucks and airplanes needed to get the jabs out to patients, to the millions of waste vials and syringes pose potential problems. “If we don’t do this in a sustainable way, using low impact technologies, natural refrigerants rather than synthetic ones, we’re going to have pieces of technology [for ultra-cold transportation] sitting here for the next 10, 15 years with big climate impact,” said Toby Peters, a professor specialized in the cold economy at the University of Birmingham. Companies use hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) gases to freeze vaccines to a very low temperature — minus 70 degrees Celsius for the BioNTech/Pfizer jab — and allow their storage and transportation over long distances. HFC emissions have a global warming effect up to 23,000 times greater than CO2 but have been decreasing in the EU since 2015 thanks to a progressive phase-out under the bloc’s F-gas Regulation. This progress could be compromised by the vaccination campaign, complicating the EU’s Green Deal target of becoming climate neutral by 2050, according to Peters. “It’s all going to add to emissions at a time where we’re trying to get to net zero,” he said. But that’s not a concern in Brussels. “The Commission estimates the risk of additional HFC pollution caused by the deployment of COVID vaccines as negligible to non-existent,” said Vivian Loonela, a spokesperson for the European Commission. If refrigeration equipment is hermetically sealed, there shouldn’t be any leaks, she continued. There is also the environmental cost of logistics — the CO2-spewing airplanes and trucks needed to shift vaccines from factories to the eager arms of millions of people. The key is distributing the jabs in an efficient way #TheEnvironmentalBoy #COVID19 #covidcausingpollution #vaccine #vacvination #jets #co2 #vaccinecausingpollution #2021 #climatechnage #noplastic https://www.instagram.com/p/COxL9v5H5Ut/?igshid=1jj59925zs538
