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IN THE lead-up to Christmas, my household began to feel like a badly managed waste-processing facility. We planned to spend time with vulnerable relatives, so were keeping a close eye on our covid-19 status. Each lateral flow test generated seven items of non-recyclable waste, which piled up in the bathroom until I bit the plastic bullet and binned the lot. They are now, presumably, in landfill.

The pandemic may have temporarily cut global consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, but from a pollution perspective, it has spawned an almighty mess. It became clear early on that large quantities of discarded masks and other medical detritus were finding their way into the wild.

Recent research has revealed the shocking . It estimates that by August 2021, the pandemic had generated 8.4 million tonnes of plastic waste, which has been dumped into the environment rather than disposed of properly. Such mismanaged waste is the main source of ocean plastic. Before the pandemic, we collectively fly-tipped about . The extra 8.4 million tonnes 鈥渋ntensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem鈥�, write the researchers (PNAS, doi.org/gnct34).

This is no exaggeration. Last year, the is a planetary crisis on a par with climate change and biodiversity loss, and that . However, until recently, this crisis was a distant third in the global pecking order. That, in part, was down to a lack of data. Quantifying waste and pollution is hard. But if there was any doubt about the scale of the problem, . It contends that waste and pollution have crossed a Rubicon called a 鈥減lanetary boundary鈥�, and are now a threat to the habitability of Earth. We are literally choking on our own detritus.

The concept of a planetary boundary dates back to 2009, when a group of researchers led by Johan Rockstr枚m at Stockholm University in Sweden tried to define what they called a . They picked nine global parameters that have stayed remarkably stable for the past 10,000 years, including climate, biodiversity, land degradation and pollution. These collectively create a life-support system for us, but are being pushed out of whack by our dominance of the planet. For each of them, they attempted to set a boundary that we breach at our peril.

鈥淲aste and pollution are now a threat to the habitability of the planet. We are literally choking on our own detritus鈥�

In 2015, the team declared that four of the nine boundaries 鈥� biosphere integrity, climate change, land use, and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles 鈥� . And two of them were still undefined, including 鈥渘ovel entities鈥� 鈥� mostly chemicals released into the environment by human activities. In other words, waste and pollution.

The new paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap. It defines the boundary as the global capacity to run safety tests on these novel entities and monitor them in the environment. The authors say global production of chemicals has increased 50-fold since 1950, and there are 350,000 synthetic chemicals on the market today. Most haven鈥檛 been properly assessed for environmental toxicity (see page 44). The team estimates we have , roughly as much as for biosphere integrity and worse than climate change (Environmental Science & Technology, doi.org/gn6rsw).

The timing of the research is both fortuitous and strategic. Next month, the 鈥� the world鈥檚 highest-level decision-making body on environmental issues 鈥� will meet in, Kenya. On the table is a , waste and pollution, modelled on the ones for climate and biodiversity. This is the culmination of a . It is no coincidence that many of the researchers on the planetary boundaries paper are involved.

Even without the covid-19 waste, it is clear that the campaign needs to succeed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done more than any other group to cajole world leaders into taking the climate crisis seriously. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, created in 2012, has elevated awareness of the biodiversity crisis to a new level. Waste and pollution deserve no less.

We aren鈥檛 going to step back inside the boundary any time soon. Global chemical production is forecast to triple again by 2050. But when our covid-19 waste has become an archaeological record of the first great pandemic of the 21st century, maybe we will have learned to stop fouling our own nest. If we are still around at all.