The impact of plastic during the COVID-19 pandemic: The point of view of the environmental science literature.

COVID-19 is the official name of the disease provoked by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Since the advent of the first cases of the new coronavirus, our society has been completely changed. Due to the changes, new environmental challenges were imposed, principally due to the considerable growth in using plastic materials in packages and personal protective equipment such as face masks. The impact of plastic during the COVID-19 pandemic was discussed in the present work from the point of view of the environmental science area. Bibliometric analysis and mapping were performed based on Scopus database search results. Emphasis was placed on analyzing the authors' keywords of the publications. The main concern of the research area concerning the use of plastic during the COVID-19 pandemic is the pollution of water bodies by plastic.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Second Global Conference on Recent Advances in Sustainable Materials 2022.)