Since 1950, some 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic were produced worldwide, according to Our World in Data. That’s a tonne for everyone alive today. Of that, 30 per cent was still in use in 2015. Some 55 per cent found its way into landfill or was otherwise discarded. Another 8 per cent was incinerated. And just 500 million tonnes – 6 per cent of the total – were recycled, of which a fifth is still in use and the rest has been disposed of.
In 2015 alone, 381 million tonnes of plastics were churned out of factories and the trend has been upward at an ever faster pace.
Although it shouldn’t be surprising that China and the US are the world’s biggest sources of plastic goods – they are after all the world’s biggest economies – Germany and Ireland make more of the stuff per head than almost anyone else.
The most developed countries also happen to be best at managing plastic waste. Typically, the poorer the country, the more likelihood that plastic is dumped in open landfills, from which it is most likely to pollute rivers and oceans. Being both relatively poor and populous countries, Indonesia, Egypt, Brazil, Nigeria and India are particularly big offenders. But China alone accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s mismanaged plastic waste. The Yangtze carries 333,000 tonnes of plastic into the ocean every year. The next most plastics-polluted river is the Ganges, which accounts for a third of the Chinese river’s tonnage.
