A survey on Covid-19 protecting masks habits carried out on the Italian population at the end of 2020 revealed that disposable face masks are the most used, thus resulting in a considerable quantity of waste. Therefore, a separate collection of these devices based on local platforms such as schools, offices and factories is proposed. This would limit collecting costs, ensure the origin and quantity and simplify the sanitizing treatment of the masks, in order to allow their introduction into the industrial recycling stream of plastic materials.

In this scenario, an urban separate waste collection material (namely mixed polyolefin) was selected and melt blended in several ratios with the disposable filtering masks. Two recycling solutions have been envisaged: the use of the filtering part alone or the joint introduction of the ear loops.

Compared to the mixed polyolefin, the resulting recycled materials from filtering face masks have lower viscosity but comparable toughness and superior stiffness and strength. The presence of ear loops in the recycled improves the rigidity but slightly decrease the viscosity and worsen both the strength and toughness. Furthermore, conceiving an outdoor application, the stability to photo oxidation was investigated through an accelerated aging process. The elaborated degradation rate of the masks material is similar to a commercial polypropylene, while for the mixed polyolefin is greatly reduced. The mixed compounds have intermediate degradation rates.

2020 年底对意大利人口进行的 Covid-19 保护口罩习惯调查显示，一次性口罩是使用最多的，因此造成了大量浪费。因此，建议基于学校、办公室和工厂等本地平台单独收集这些设备。这将限制收集成本，确保来源和数量并简化口罩的消毒处理，以便将它们引入塑料材料的工业回收流。

在这种情况下，我们选择了一种城市垃圾分类收集材料（即混合聚烯烃），并与一次性过滤口罩按多种比例熔融混合。已经设想了两种回收解决方案：单独使用过滤部分或联合引入耳挂。

与混合聚烯烃相比，过滤式口罩产生的回收材料具有较低的粘度，但具有相当的韧性和优异的刚度和强度。回收中耳挂的存在提高了刚性，但略微降低了粘度并降低了强度和韧性。此外，考虑户外应用，通过加速老化过程研究了光氧化的稳定性。口罩材料的精细降解率与商品聚丙烯相似，而混合聚烯烃的降解率大大降低。混合化合物具有中等降解率。