With the “Catch the Glove” campaign, launched on 3 June, the organisation appeals to the responsibility of citizens to put protective gloves and masks in the garbage containers to protect health and prevent the world's rivers and seas from becoming even more polluted and calls for an urgent plan to manage the waste caused by the pandemic.

The organisation collected images of masks and gloves scattered in various places, which could contaminate people and reach the sea when dragged into rivers, as has already happened in the Mediterranean and other seas around the world, according to the organisation.

Each surgical mask, which weighs about four grams, can take 400 years to degrade, which presents a “very worrying” problem with its widespread use.

WWF fears that the lifting of movement restriction and population confinement measures, especially in the summer, will increase pollution on the beaches, with which turtles, jellyfish and other animals that mistake gloves and masks for food will suffer.

Annually, it is estimated that about 100,000 marine animals die each year trapped, asphyxiated or poisoned with plastic waste.

It also warns that plastic pollution in the seas can reach a critical point if effective measures are not taken and calls for “not one step” to be taken back in the commitments adopted to eliminate disposable plastics in 2021 in Spain.