when sanitary masks become aesthetic bricks

In several health establishments, terminals invite nursing assistants to remove their masks. At the end of the day, the collectors of this new waste, which appeared with the health crisis, come to empty the terminal. In the Tybilles nursing home in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), around 180 masks are worn in a day, or 65,000 masks consumed per year. “It was very important to be able to recover this waste, which has finally become a key player in our daily lives.“, explains Virginie Poubelle, the establishment’s family relations manager.

After collection, the masks, contained in water-soluble garbage bags, are washed, disinfected, then treated by workers with disabilities in an ESAT (establishment or work assistance service). They are stripped of their strings, then sent to a design workshop to undergo their ultimate transformation. Here, the masks are crushed then mixed with textile, before being compressed and transformed into aesthetic bricks.