There are seven different types of plastic, but not all can be recycled. On a worldwide scale, we produce 2.6 trillion pounds of trash per year. (Jambeck et al, 2015). This could equal as much as 8.4% of the bird's body weight. That means we save more than 190 billion Kwh of energy with the plastic we currently recycle. Worldwide, we use more than one trillion plastic bags each year. How much energy is saved by recycling plastic? The amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity. The Laysan albatross is a sea bird that nests in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. More than 300 million metric tons of plastic waste are produced each year. The rest 79% is sent to landfills, or whats increasingly common, it ends up in the environment, in our rivers and lakes, beaches, and our oceans. Americans throw away 35 billion plastic bottles every year. Marine animals can either get caught in plastic objects (such as the plastic rings that hold drinks cans together), ingest the plastic, and/or be exposed to plastic chemicals, which can alter their physiology over time. Eight million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year, and its estimated that by 2050, the amount of plastic in the ocean will weigh more than all the fish. However between the 1970s and the 1990s, plastic waste generation more than tripled, reflecting a similar rise in plastic production. 1 Over the period from 1950 to 2015, cumulative production reached 7.8 billion tonnes of plastic more than one tonne of plastic for In 1950 the world produced only 2 million tonnes per year. Plastic pollution is a real threat to marine life, and the problem continues to grow each year. First, it can be recycled or reprocessed into a secondary material (22, 26). Approximately 91% of plastic is not recycled. In the past 10 years, weve made more plastic For context, this is roughly equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population. This contribution to the As of 2019, the North American waste management market was valued at 208 billion U.S. dollars, with the U.S. accounting for much of the market. Only about 25% of the plastic produced in the U.S. is recycled. Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal. Just by recycling one ton of plastic, you can save 5,774 Kwh of energy. In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015. Yet it emits 100 times as much plastic to the ocean each year (200 to 300 tonnes versus only 3 to 5 tonnes). Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times. A whopping 91% of plastic isn't recycled Billions of tons of plastic have been made over the past decades, and much of it is becoming trash Each year kerbside recycling can help save: Laid end to end, all the aluminium cans recycled worldwide in 2010 would circle the Earth 169 times. How Much Garbage Do Humans Make Every Year? Each year, more than 380 million metric tons of plastic is produced worldwide. According to the United Nations, at least 800 species worldwide are affected by marine debris, and as much as 80 percent of that litter is plastic.. Shocking Ocean Pollution Statistics: 100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste alone.. 100,000 marine animals die from getting entangled in plastic yearly this is just the creatures we find!. In the early 2000s, the amount of plastic waste we generated rose more in a single decade than it had in the previous 40 years. Lego is responsible for 100,000 metric tons of it. In a study of dead chicks during 1994 and 1995, 97.6% of carcasses were found to contain plastic. The answer is upsetting: Each year, each person tosses out roughly 220.96 pounds of food waste, which is especially tragic since so many children are going hungry in the United States. It can take up to 1,000 years for a bag to disintegrate completely. Recycling plastic takes 88% less energy than making plastic from raw materials. By the end of 2015, all plastic waste ever generated from primary plastics had reached 5800 Mt, 700 Mt of which were PP&A fibers. Just 9% of all plastic created is ever recycled, while 12 percent is incinerated. Plastic waste recycled worldwide 2018 21.3% Overview. Today, we produce about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. [3] Five trillion plastic bags are produced worldwide annually. By 2015, annual production had increased nearly 200-fold, reaching 381 million tonnes. If everyone recycled one plastic bag, those materials could be reused in making 28,906 park benches or, according to Tex data,144,530 16-foot composite deck boards. Plastic takes up to 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill. 1 in 3 marine mammal species get found entangled in litter, 12-14,000 tons of plastic are ingested by North Pacific fish yearly.. [2] Humans use about 1.2 million plastic bottles per minute in total. There are essentially three different fates for plastic waste. How many plastic bags are used each year? The adult birds collect plastic debris (along with food) from the ocean to feed to their chicks. Roughly 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the world's oceans every year and the majority of this waste comes from just six countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam , Srilanka and Thailand. One might think that because United States produce so much plastic waste that we would be one of the main perpetrators, but in fact, the U.S. ranks 20th in Coca-Cola pledged to recycle a used bottle or can for every one the company sells by 2030 and increase recycled material in plastic bottles to