Читать книгу Circular Economy For Dummies - Eric Corey Freed - Страница 40

No other material is as troublesome as plastic. A whopping 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic was produced in the past century, and half of that was designed to be used only once. Let’s look at the impact of all that plastic:

 Ninety-one percent of plastic isn’t recycled, and 79 percent is sitting in landfills.

 Most of the products discarded in curbside recycling bins end up not being recycled because of food contamination.

 The rapid increase in plastics manufacturing has doubled roughly every 15 years.

 Plastics production has outpaced nearly every other human-made material.

 Plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade, so most of it still exists.

 By 2050, if trends continue, landfills will hold 12 billion metric tons of plastic. That amount is 35,000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building.

 Half of all plastic becomes trash in less than a year, whereas half of all steel remains in use for decades.

 One million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute.

 Humans produce about 330 million tons of plastic waste every year.

 The amount of plastic produced annually is nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.

 By 2050, the plastics industry could account for 20 percent of the world’s total oil consumption.

 Nine million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year.

 If current trends continue, the oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050.