By Victor Kiprop on June 7 2018 in Environment. This is estimated at 2.16%, with 300 million tons of plastic produced annually and approximately 6.5 million tons of plastic waste entering the sea. Plastic pipes help save water, we have a 25% shortage of water in the world. Furthermore, an additional 8 million metric tons are added annually. t in 2015. “The marine science community has been really obsessed with finding out where the plastic is,” Reisser, who was not involved in the study, said. Dr Denise Hardesty, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a co-author of the research published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, told the Guardian that finding microplastic in such a remote location and at such depths “points to the ubiquity of plastics, no matter where you are in the world”. #8: 16 billion disposable coffee cups are used each year. Larger plastic can entangle wildlife, while microplastics and even smaller pieces could be consumed by an array of species from plankton to whales. Hardesty said there were imperfections in the estimates, but they were based on the best available information. 1 Includes Thermoplastics, Polyurethanes, Thermosets, Elastomers, Adhesives, Coatings and Sealants and PP-Fibers. The … The correct figure is 9%. Australia’s government science agency, CSIRO, gathered and analysed cores of the ocean floor taken at six remote sites about 300km off the country’s southern coast in the Great Australian Bight. The world uses 500 billion single-use plastic bags every year. According to a report by the United Nations, the world produces roughly 300 million tons of plastic each year and half of it is disposable. In 2015 global plastic’s production grew by 3.4% compared to 2014. By 2020 the number of plastics in the sea will be higher than the number of fish. Leaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge in September to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050. One out of every 10 items picked up in an International Coastal Cleanup in 2009 was a plastic bag. South Australia's ban on single-use plastic cutlery and straws hailed as 'historic', Microplastic pollution devastating soil species, study finds. Plastic wasn’t invented until the late 1800s and the production of plastic didn’t take off until around 1950. Although the exact amount of plastic in the oceans cannot be accurately quantified, it is estimated that 150 million metric tons of plastic circulate the world's oceans. But then it really took off. That makes plastic bags the second most common kind of waste item found in coastal cleanup. Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface. But she said the shape of the pieces under a microscope suggested they were once consumer items. Using a similar approach as they did when figuring the mass, the team chose to employ conservative estimations of the plastic count. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year. For the study, the researchers extrapolated the amount of plastic found in their core samples and from research from other organisations to conclude as much as 14.4m tonnes of microplastic was now on the ocean floor globally. Since the 1950s about 8 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced. It is estimated that 300 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and half of this plastic is used just once and then disposed. “We need to make sure the big blue is not a big trash pit. Another study has estimated there is 250,000 tonnes of plastic floating on the ocean surface. How plastic is damaging planet Earth. She said she believed the vast majority of plastics were actually accumulating on coastlines. They are responsible for the production of 19.5% of plastic used in the world. Dr Julia Reisser, a marine biologist at the University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute, has been researching plastic pollution for 15 years. The patch holds between 1.1 and 3.6 trillion pieces of plastic float, which weighs 100,000 tons. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of five known garbage patches in the world's oceans. But she said the amount of plastic on the ocean floor was relatively small compared to all the plastics being released, suggesting the deep sea sediments were not currently a major resting place for plastics. In 2019, the production of plastics totaled around 368 million metric tons worldwide. The US is has been proactive at regulating the usage of plastic by launching single-use plastic bans throughout major US cities. She said the new study was an important contribution to global efforts, and hoped the deep-sea data from Australia could be combined with other efforts worldwide for future studies to get a more accurate picture. And by 2025, the annual cumulative output of plastic into the world’s oceans will be around 155 million metric tons. 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches, but only 1% of straws end up as waste in the ocean. Marine plastic debris is one of the most pressing environmental concerns facing the world today. It is estimated that 300 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and half of this plastic is used just once and then disposed. More than 9 billion tons of plastic have been made since the 1950s, and the vast majority of it has been thrown in the trash, says a new study. In 2017, the U.S. produced nearly 35.4 million tons (32 million metric tons) of the stuff, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Sorry. 8 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every 12 months. In the U.S alone, it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to meet the demands. An estimate 1,500 plastic bottles end up as waste in landfills or thrown in the ocean every second. Correction (March 12th 2018): The headline of this piece previously stated that only 7% of the world's plastic is recycled. Reisser has also founded a new organisation to investigate new plastics using seaweed as the basic material. This is more evidence that we need to stop this at the source.”. The amount of plastic in the world exploded from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to 340 million tons in 2016. In 1907, Belgian-American chemist Leo Henricus Arthur Baekeland created the first form of plastic based on a synthetic polymer. What followed was the commercialization of plastic, most of which was used as packaging material. The world uses over 500 billion plastic bags a year – that’s 150 for each person on Earth. Six decades after its commercialization, the plastic is wreaking environmental havoc across the globe by clogging drainage systems, choking rivers and accumulating in the ocean. #9: The world produces more than 14 million US tons of polystyrene (plastic foam) each year. Plastic is not only piling up in the oceans, but is also causing more harm to marine animals than any other element. Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. A plastic bag is used for only 15 minutes on average but can last for a … How much plastic has the world produced cumulatively? All maps, graphics, flags, photos and original descriptions © 2021 worldatlas.com, Countries Putting The Most Plastic Waste Into The Oceans, The Causes And Effects Of Ocean Pollution. At last count, there were at least 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world. Major countries that did not sign the pledge included the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India and Australia. Unfortunately, many of the developing countries which accept plastic imports, especially in the wake of China’s ban, do not have strict regulations on how to deal with this waste, and much of it … “It is useful to give people a sense of the scope and scale that we are talking about,” she said. FACT #1: About 8 million metric tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually.Of those, 236,000 tons are microplastics – tiny pieces of broken-down plastic smaller than your little fingernail: FACT #2: There are five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world. They also encourage recycling and enforce regulations on its management. There are 500 times more pieces of microplastic in the sea than there are stars in our galaxy and by 2050 it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish Hardesty said it wasn’t possible to know how old the pieces of plastic were, or what sort of object they had once been part of. This invention, which he named Bakelite, was nothing extraordinary until the 1960s when businesses realized that plastic could be used as packaging material. The uncontrolled production of plastic led to the emergence of production facilities that were easy to set up and finance in developing states. The world has produced over 9 billion tons of plastic since then and TWO THIRDS have ended up in the environment - including our oceans. Stemming the tide of plastic entering the world’s waterways and ocean has emerged as a major international challenge. “If we could travel a thousand years into the future, that plastic will have slowly fragmented and been removed from our coastline.”. Every year, about 8 … Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface. However, plastic had a shortcoming: it was non-biodegradable. Half of the plastics that land in the ocean are less dense than water, meaning that they float. That’s the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers, and the problem continues to grow. Photo Credit: European Commission … Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean, according to a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, 2006). Multiple scientific methods were needed to understand the potential impact of plastics on ocean wildlife. It is estimated that 250 metric tonnes of plastic will be in the oceans by 2030, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Plastic food packaging helps save food waste, we throw away one third of all food produced for human consumption. How Much Plastic Is Produced? Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. Ocean gyres pull floating plastic together to form ocean garbage patches. Production increased exponentially, from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 448 million tons by 2015. Ten percent is recycled, while 12% is incinerated. Aquatic animals are becoming trapped in fishing nets at an increasingly staggering rate, while thousands more are mistaking plastic for food. 300 million tons of plastic waste is produced each year around the world. The cores were drilled in March and April 2017 between 288km and 349km from the coast, at depths of between 1,655 metres and 3,016 metres. Plastic proved to be popular among businesses and consumers, as it was cheap to produce and easily disposable. The vast majority – 82 million tonnes of macroplastics and 40 million tonnes of microplastics – is washed up, buried or resurfaced along the world’s shorelines. All the same, the world currently uses millions of tons of plastic, and it all has to go somewhere. SBS News explains. Almost 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the world's oceans annually, according to a 2015 study from the Unversity of California Santa Barbara. Between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year, according to figures published in the journal Science in 2015 . “This means it’s throughout the water column. • Plastics production ramped up from 1.5 Mio. Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. “Much more is being trapped on land than at sea,” she said. US scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made and put the number at 8.3 billion tonnes. 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