Plastic pollution

The Second Industrial Revolution made a major change in the field of Technology, which is why it is called the Technological Revolution of the World. This change led to rapid standardization and industrialization from the late 19^th Century into the early 20^th Century. In 1907, the first synthetic plastic Bakelite was produced, marking the beginning of the global plastic industry. However, the growth in the plastic industry was standstill till the late 1950s. Over the next 68 years, the annual production of plastics increased nearly 200-fold to 384 Million Tons in 2018. The world now produces more than 380 million tons of plastic every year, which could end up as pollutants or entering our natural environment and oceans.

Plastic’s achievement is stellar because it is cheap and light, transforming food storage’s quality, aid in saving lives in the health sector, and enabling the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels. But this enabled the generation of a vast quantity of plastic waste over the past few decades. Annual global production of plastics has increased more than 200-fold since 1950. From the 1950s to the 70s, a minor quantity of plastic was produced, hence plastic management was simple. In the period of the 1990s, the production of plastics tripled within two decades. Around the 2000s, the rate at which plastic was produced rose dramatically. At present, we see a steep ascent in the generation of plastic of about 300-381 million tons of plastic waste every year all over the world. Huge research has been made showing that 7.8-8.3 billion tons of plastic were produced since the early 1950s. Sixty percent of that plastic has ended up in landfills. In 2015, humanity has produced plastic exceeding 380 million tons. For context, this is roughly equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population.

From the above geo-map, we can see that China is the biggest generator of plastic waste producing approximately 60 million tons of plastics waste followed by the USA generating approximately 38 million tons of plastic in the year 2010. Excluding these, almost all the other countries in the world generated plastic waste from (0-15) million tons of plastic in that year. The total plastic waste generation of the world in that year was approximately 270 million tons. On the basis of that, we can say that the cumulative generation of plastic waste by china and the USA in 2010 was more than 1/3^rd of the world. The population of China is 5 times more than the USA, but it's only generating 57% more than the USA.

In a study published in Science Advances, researchers found that residents of the U.S. produce more plastic waste per person than any other nation, with Americans generating an average of 105kg of plastic per year. The British are close behind, throwing away almost 99kg annually. On the other hand, China came out as the top producer of plastic for the global market, even though Chinese people on average use relatively little of the stuff—just 15kg per person.

Plastic is a rapidly growing segment of municipal solid waste (MSW). While plastics are found in all major MSW categories, the containers and packaging category used the most plastic at over 146 million tons in 2015. This category includes bags, sacks, and wraps; other packaging; polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and jars; high-density polyethylene (HDPE) natural bottles; and other containers. Manufacturers also use plastic in durable goods, such as appliances, furniture, etc. The plastic food service items are usually made of clear or foamed polystyrene, white trash bags are made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) or low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Plastic resins are also used in a variety of container and packaging products, such as PET beverage bottles, HDPE bottles for milk and water, and a wide variety of other resin types used in other plastic containers, bags, lids, etc.

The above chart shows that the use of primary plastics by the top 5 industries responsible for generating the most plastic waste in the world in the year 2015. As we can see the packaging industries which have a very short in-use lifetime(typically around 6 months or less) had generated 146 million tons of plastic waste in a year which is almost more than 2.5 times of what other industries had generated. Hence we can say, that packaging is the dominant generator of plastic waste, responsible for almost half of the global total.