Difference between revisions of "Plastic Pollution Facts and Figures"

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* The amount of plastic produced from 2000 - 2010 exceeds the amount produced during the entire last century.<ref>Thompson, R.C. “Plastics, the environment and human health: current consensus and future trends.” ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences.'' 364.1526 (2009):2153-2166.</ref>
 
* The amount of plastic produced from 2000 - 2010 exceeds the amount produced during the entire last century.<ref>Thompson, R.C. “Plastics, the environment and human health: current consensus and future trends.” ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences.'' 364.1526 (2009):2153-2166.</ref>
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* An estimated 8300 million metric tons (Mt) of plastics had been produced as of mid-2017. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.<ref>    Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law, "Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made", Science Advances, 19 Jul 2017:
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Vol. 3, no. 7, e1700782, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700782 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full</ref> <ref>http://www.cereplast.es/recycling-plastics-how-to-read-the-plastic-recycling-numbers/</ref>
  
 
* In 2010 about 690,000 tons of waste HDPE plastic "bags, sacks and wraps" were generated in the United States, but only 4.3% of this total was recycled.<ref>United States Environmental Protection Agency, December 2011. Web. 23 Feb 2012. http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2010_MSW_Tables_and_Figures_508.pdf</ref>
 
* In 2010 about 690,000 tons of waste HDPE plastic "bags, sacks and wraps" were generated in the United States, but only 4.3% of this total was recycled.<ref>United States Environmental Protection Agency, December 2011. Web. 23 Feb 2012. http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2010_MSW_Tables_and_Figures_508.pdf</ref>

Revision as of 13:23, 26 July 2017

This page is available in multiple languages:
Plastic Pollution Facts and Figures (English)
Rise Above Plastics: Nombres et faits (Français)



Plastic Production and Properties

  • The amount of plastic produced from 2000 - 2010 exceeds the amount produced during the entire last century.[1]
  • An estimated 8300 million metric tons (Mt) of plastics had been produced as of mid-2017. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.[2] [3]
  • In 2010 about 690,000 tons of waste HDPE plastic "bags, sacks and wraps" were generated in the United States, but only 4.3% of this total was recycled.[4]
  • Plastics do not biodegrade, but instead break down into small particles that persist in the ocean, absorb toxins, and enter our food chain through fish, sea birds and other marine life.[5]
  • Plastic bags are problematic in the litter stream because they float easily in the air and water, traveling long distances and never fully breaking down in water.

Plastics in the Ocean

  • Plastic is the most common type of marine litter worldwide.[6] [7]
  • Up to 80% of the plastic in our oceans comes from land-based sources.[8] [9] [10] An estimated 5-13 million tons of plastic enter our oceans each year from land-based sources.[11]
  • Over 50% of plastic entering the ocean comes from just five developing countries where there is a lack of waste management capacity.[12]
  • Plastics comprise up to 90% of floating marine debris.[13]
  • By 2025, for every three tons of finfish swimming in the oceans, there could be one ton of plastic in marine waters.[14] Projections indicate that by 2050, the ration of fish to plastics could be 1:1. [15]
  • Plastic debris in the area popularly known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has increased by 100 times in the past 40 years.[16] Scientists have calculated that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million MT entering the ocean. [17]
  • At least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing 268,940 tons are currently floating at sea.[18]
  • Researchers who analyzed sea salt sold in China found between 550 and 681 microplastics particles per kilogram of sea salt. [19]

Impacts to Marine Wildlife

  • 50 to 80 percent of dead sea turtles have ingested plastic. Plastic bags, which resemble jellyfish, are the most commonly found item in sea turtles’ stomachs.[20]
  • Worldwide, 82 of 144 examined bird species contained plastic debris in their stomachs; and in some cases, 80 percent of the population had consumed plastic.[21] Researchers found that 66 percent of Giant Petrel shorebirds regurgitated plastic when feeding their chicks.[22]
Cartoon by Max Gustafson
  • Commercial fish, such as Opah and Bigeye Tuna, consume plastic,[23] which could significantly reduce global populations.[24] A University of Hawaii study reports “[i]n the two [Opah] species found in Hawaiian waters, 58 percent of the small-­‐eye opah and 43 percent of the big-­‐eye opah had ingested some kind of debris.”
  • Impacts of marine debris have been reported for 663 marine wildlife species. Over half of these reports documented entanglement in and ingestion of marine debris. Over 80% of the impacts were associated with plastic debris. [25][26]
  • Recent studies estimate that fish off the West Coast ingest over 12,000 tons of plastic a year.[27] [28]
  • In Indonesia, anthropogenic (human caused) debris was found in 28% of individual fish and in 55% of all species. Similarly, in California, anthropogenic debris was found in 25% of individual fish and in 67% of all species. All of the anthropogenic debris recovered from fish in Indonesia was plastic, whereas anthropogenic debris recovered from fish in the USA was primarily fibers.[29]

Plastic Bags

  • Cleanup of plastic bags is costly. California spends an estimated $25 million annually to landfill discarded plastic bags, and public agencies spend more than $500 million annually in litter cleanup.[30] [31]
  • It is estimated that Americans go through about 100 billion plastic bags a year, or about 360 bags per year for every man, woman and child in the country.[32] [33]
  • Those 100 billion plastic bags, if tied together, would reach around the Earth’s equator 773 times![34]

Plastic Bottles

  • Producing the plastic bottles for American consumption of bottled water in 2006 required 3 liters of water to produce each 1 liter of bottled water. Production of these water bottles also required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation.[35]
  • 49.4 billion plastic water bottles were sold in the United States in 2015.[36] The recycling rate for plastic bottles was only 31.1% which translates to roughly 34 billion plastic bottles that were littered or went into a landfill in 2015.[37]


For even more facts and figures - and solutions(!) see this Plastics Solutions Briefing Booklet prepared by Surfrider Foundation and UCLA’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic.

Footnotes

  1. Thompson, R.C. “Plastics, the environment and human health: current consensus and future trends.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences. 364.1526 (2009):2153-2166.
  2. Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law, "Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made", Science Advances, 19 Jul 2017: Vol. 3, no. 7, e1700782, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700782 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full
  3. http://www.cereplast.es/recycling-plastics-how-to-read-the-plastic-recycling-numbers/
  4. United States Environmental Protection Agency, December 2011. Web. 23 Feb 2012. http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2010_MSW_Tables_and_Figures_508.pdf
  5. Williams, Caroline. "Battle of the Bag." New Scientist. (2004): Print.
  6. Derraik, J.G.B. “The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris: a review.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 44. (2002): 843.
  7. Gregory, M.R., Ryan, P.G. “Pelagic plastics and other seaborne persistent synthetic debris: a review of Southern Hemisphere perspectives.” Marine Debris – Sources, Impacts and Solutions. Ed. J.M. Coe, D.B. Rogers. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1997, pp. 4, 9-66.
  8. California Ocean Protection Council. An Implementation Strategy for the California Ocean Protection Council Resolution to Reduce and Prevent Ocean Litter. 2008. 3.
  9. "Ships Set Sail to Examine the Vast Patch of PLastic in the Pacific Ocean." 80beats. Discover, 08/03/2009. Web. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/08/03/ships-set-sail-to-examine-the-vast-patch-of-plastic-in-the-pacific-ocean/.
  10. “Marine Debris." California Coastal Cleanup Day, Web. http://www.cleanupday.org/education.htm.
  11. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Jenna R. Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, and Kara Lavender Law, Science 13 February 2015: 347 (6223), 768-771.
  12. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Jenna R. Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, and Kara Lavender Law, Science 13 February 2015: 347 (6223), 768-771.
  13. United Nations. Marine Litter: An Analytical Overview. , Web. 14 Feb 2011. http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/anl_oview.pdf.
  14. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Jenna R. Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, and Kara Lavender Law, Science 13 February 2015: 347 (6223), 768-771.
  15. 2015-2025 projection of plastics in the ocean based on an estimated stock of 150 million tonnes in 2015 (Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, Stemming the Tide (2015)), estimated annual leakage rates of plastics into the ocean by Jambeck et al. of 8 million tonnes in 2010 and 9.1 million tonnes in 2015 (J. R. Jambeck et al., Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean (Science, 2015), taken from the middle scenario), and annual growth in leakage flows of plastics into the ocean of 5% up to 2025 (conservatively taken below the 6.8% annual growth rate in ocean plastics leakage into the ocean between 2015 and 2025 as estimated in Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, middle scenario). 2025-2050 projections based on a plastics leakage into the ocean growth rate of 3.5% p.a., in line with long-term GDP growth estimates (International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2015 (2015))
  16. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/1847
  17. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768
  18. Eriksen M, Lebreton LCM, Carson HS, Thiel M, Moore CJ, et al. (2014) Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea. PLoS ONE 9(12): e111913. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
  19. Dongqi Yang, Huahong Shi, Lan Li, Jiana Li, Khalida Jabeen, and Prabhu Kolandhasamy, Microplastic Pollution in Table Salts from China, Env. Sci.& Tech. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b03163
  20. N. Mrosovsky, Leatherback Turtles: The Menace of Plastic, 58 MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN 287 (2009).
  21. GREENPEACE, PLASTIC DEBRIS IN THE WORLD’S OCEANS 14 (2006), at 20, available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2007/8/plastic_ocean_report.pdf
  22. Id
  23. C. Anela Choy & Jeffery C. Drazen, Plastic for Dinner? Observations of Frequent Debris Ingestion by Pelagic Predatory Fishes from the Central North Pacific, 485 MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES 155 (2013), at 161
  24. Christiana M. Boerger et al., Plastic Ingestion by Planktivorous Fishes in the North Pacific Central Gyre, 60 MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN 2275, 2277 (2010).
  25. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel—GEF (2012). Impacts of Marine Debris on Biodiversity: Current Status and Potential Solutions, Montreal, Technical Series No. 67, 61 pages.
  26. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Jenna R. Jambeck, Roland Geyer, Chris Wilcox, Theodore R. Siegler, Miriam Perryman, Anthony Andrady, Ramani Narayan, and Kara Lavender Law, Science 13 February 2015: 347 (6223), 768-771.
  27. Davison P, Asch RG (2011) Plastic ingestion by mesopelagic fishes in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 432:173-180
  28. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/1928
  29. Rochman, C. M. et al. Anthropogenic debris in seafood: Plastic debris and fibers from textiles in fish and bivalves sold for human consumption. Sci. Rep. 5, 14340; doi: 10.1038/srep14340 (2015). http://www.nature.com/articles/srep14340
  30. Californians Against Waste. "The Problem of Plastic Bags." http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags/problem.
  31. Stickel, B.H., A. Jahn and W. Kier 2012. The Cost to West Coast Communities of Dealing with Trash, Reducing Marine Debris. Prepared by Kier Associates for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, pursuant to Order for Services EPG12900098, 21 p. + appendices.
  32. Royte, Elizabeth. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
  33. U.S. International Trade Commission (May 2009). "Polyethylene Retail Carrier Bags from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Vietnam" (see p. 18) https://www.usitc.gov/publications/701_731/pub4080.pdf
  34. U.S. International Trade Commission. Polyethylene Retail Carrier Bags from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Vietman. Publication 4080. May 2009, pg. IV-7. *Calculation is based on the following: 2008 bag consumption, according to U.S. International Trade Commission = 101,449,633,000. Earth’s Circumference = 131,480,184 feet, Average bag length = 1ft.
  35. Pacific Institute Fact Sheet, 2007. http://pacinst.org/publication/bottled-water-and-energy-a-fact-sheet/
  36. Euromonitor
  37. https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/2015-United-States-National-Postconsumer-Plastic-Bottle-Recycling-Report.pdf