Phillip Schofield made his thoughts on PPE disposal very clear as he hosted This Morning on Thursday.
Phillip, 58, and his co-host Holly Willoughby were speaking to a gondolier live in Venice about the effects the pandemic has had on the stunning Italian city.
The Venetian man explained to them: "Tourism has gone down 94%. From October we stopped working because all the regions were closed."
Phillip then commented: "I can remember right at the beginning of lockdown, everyone was saying, 'well, all the humans are indoors, so nature can recover'.
"That was before we dumped billions of tons worth of PPE all over the planet, but did you notice that the canals got clearer and the place was cleaner when there were no tourists?" he added.
"Yeah sure," the gondolier replied. "The canal, the water was cleaner. So it was possible to see the bottom and fishes for like two or three months."
Last year, The Mirror reported on how throwaway masks were the latest plastic menace found strewn across beaches, rivers, beauty spots and pavements.
Environmental groups said that since the public had been told to cover their faces, hundreds of thousands, even millions, of single-use masks were being dumped outdoors, blighting towns and the countryside - a health hazard to birds and other wildlife.
In just three hours, our environment editor found 50 discarded masks littering the streets of her home city Brighton, as well as on nearby beaches and Devil’s Dyke, a National Trust beauty spot.
Just two were reusable. She also found dozens of wet wipes, gloves and other PPE items, now fast becoming the country’s new plastic pollution crisis.
Experts say discarded single-use plastic masks degrade into tiny microplastics which are too small to ever be removed from the ocean or rivers, and are harmful to wildlife.
The RSPCA have been encouraging people with disposable masks to "snip the straps" after use to prevent animals getting caught in them.
In Chelmsford, Essex, a young seagull was found by the charity with sore and swollen legs wrapped in a disposable plastic mask.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV1.
