Sustainable Recycling of PPE Biomedical Waste for Eco-Friendly Brick Production

Personal protective equipment’s (PPEs) waste is one of the hazardous wastes, which includes surgical gowns, head covers, surgical masks, shoe covers, etc. During COVID-19, a large amount of PPEs waste was generated and was disposed into oceans and surrounding environments (landfill or incineration). PPEs are generally made up of nonwoven fabrics which have been used widely in numerous applications like geotextiles, medical, etc., and they consist of many polymers like polypropylene, polyacrylonitrile, polyurethane, etc. This kind of waste leads to different kinds of environmental pollution like water pollution, air pollution, etc. This paper presents a study on generating construction material (brick) composites from PPEs waste and fly ash. The work (manufacturing of brick) has been carried out with a proportion of PPEs waste (40%) and fly ash (60%). Different properties such as compressive strength, water absorption, efflorescence, and soundness were investigated through standard tests suggested by IS: 3495 (1992). A comparison between the properties of the proposed brick with a standard clay brick reveals that the brick prepared from the PPEs waste may be used in the construction of temporary structures, non-load-bearing walls, and partition walls with satisfactory performance.