Personal protective equipment (PPE) is something we all learned about over the last year as health care workers shrouded themselves in this disposable gear to stay safe while treating COVID-19 patients.
Problems importing enough products and the environmental impact of disposable PPE have been huge.
Merrow Manufacturing in Fall River is developing a line of Net Zero PPE.
The company, which has roots in New England dating back to the 1800s, retooled when the pandemic first hit so they could produce the disposable PPE that frontline workers desperately needed.
Now company CEO Charlie Merrow is looking to the future.
“What we did is we invested in technology to create a groundbreaking new product,” Merrow said. “We’re talking about something that is 100% recycled, from soda bottles, into medical products that are going into hospitals, and when they’re finished being used there, then they’re recycled again.”
That’s good news for the nation’s landfills and incinerators.
And as necessary as it has been, disposable PPE has become an environmental nightmare.
The Ocean Conservancy reports that over the last six months, their volunteers worldwide have collected 107,000 PPE items from beaches and waterways.
The organization believes that number grossly undercounts the problem. “This tells us the PPE pollutions issue is very large,” said Nick Mallos.
Merrow says making these products closer to home prevents future problems with international supply chains, which fell apart in 2020.
The tread and fabric are created in North Carolina and shipped north to be made into a wide variety of designs.
Precision Fabrics Group and Unifi are both working with Merrow Manufacturing.
Bryon Bassett of Precision Fabrics Group believes this approach can be a win-win for hospitals.
“If a hospital is looking to reduce costs, we believe recycled product is an excellent way for them to reduce costs over disposable products. Savings could be anywhere from 20% to 40%.”
Merrow says these designs can be worn and then washed more than 100 times before they need to be recycled.