USA Plastic Statistics

The world in general and the United States consume vast kilos of materials and the consumption is swiftly increasing. In the past 5 decades, humans have expended more resources than in all previous history. The U.S. consumed 57% more materials in the year 2000 than in 1975. The global increase was even higher and with less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. was responsible for about one-third of the world’s total material consumption in 1970-1995. In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were renewable (e.g., agricultural, fishery, and forestry products); by 1995, only 6% of materials consumed were renewable. Most materials now consumed in the U.S. are nonrenewable that includes metals, minerals, and fossil-fuel-derived products. This rapid rise in material use has led to severe environmental effects such as desertification, overly stressed fisheries, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, etc.

The plastic waste either goes for recycling, combustion, or landfills. From the above line chart race, we can see that the USA is generating approximately 35 million tons of waste from 2015 and less than 10% of plastics waste getting recycled. Approximately, 15% of plastic gets combusted and more than 75% of the plastic waste is landfilled which is dreadful because plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater which harms the entire ecosystem.