Assessment of macro litter in Deli River Medan during pandemic COVID-19

Abstract

This study identifies and quantifies floating macro litter and macro plastic from Deli River Medan during pandemic Covid-19. Macro litter transport consists of floating items at surface, suspended in water column and transport over on riverbed. Litter was collected from 5 location along 11.6 km using static trawls with a height of 150 cm and width of 300 cm with a square mesh size of 0.5 cm. Sampling was done in July, and during selection, 40 cm of net’s height was constantly submerged for one hour. This study found that macro litter was 19.26 kg/h with 65.2% as anthropogenic waste, 34.3% as macro plastic, 0.3% as metal, and 0.15% as medical waste. The composition of macro plastic has various variants, namely food containers, plastic bags, food packaging, sanitary packaging, and mineral water packaging with percentages of 10.21%, 67.89%, 8.35%, 4.36%, and 9.18%. The macro plastic abundance was obtained at 2,476 x 10-4 kg/m3. This study showed a significant increase in plastic consumption during the pandemic, especially plastic bags because it is dominated in all locations.