Let us get some peer-reviewed information about plastic waste. The more quantitative, the better.
First of all, let us set some dates and numbers:
- 1860 - plastic was invented
- 1907 - global plastic industry begins
- 1920-1950 - plastic production develops
- 1950 - around 2 million tons of plastic produced
- 2019 - around 368 million tons of plastic produced
- 2022 - around 400 million tons of plastic produced
Now, the previous number are taken without questioning too much from the paper by Pilapitiya and Ratnayake (2024). We will in general assume that the numbers are somehow correct, but we shall not take them as the absolute truth. In particular, it is probably not trivial to define what is plastic and what is not, and how to measure the amount of plastic produced. Also, it is probably importanto to consider how the plastic was produced. So we need to get more precise. Let us go!
What is plastic?
Categorization of plastics
What does the production of plastic depends on?
Urbanization, economic development, and increasing population are the main drivers for the growth of plastic waste.
Taxes on plastic products.
How much plastic is waste?
What is waste? We have a definition from the United Nations: “materials that are not prime products for which the generator has no further use in terms of his/her own purposes of production, transformation or consumption, and of which he/she wants to dispose of”.
References
- Pilapitiya, P. N. T., & Ratnayake, A. S. (2024). The world of plastic waste: a review. Cleaner Materials, 100220.