The report states that in the U.S. the two largest consumer groups that should be of most interest to the plastics packaging industry are the Baby Boomers and Generation Y (which is also called Millennials).
1. China. Given that it's home to over 1.4 billion people – or over a sixth of the global population – it's only logical that China would be the biggest producer of plastic pollution in the world.
The 20th century saw a revolution in plastic production: the advent of entirely synthetic plastics. Belgian chemist and clever marketeer Leo Baekeland pioneered the first fully synthetic plastic in 1907.
Humans use about 1.2 million plastic bottles per minute in total. Approximately 91% of plastic is not recycled. Roughly half of our global annual plastic production is destined for a single-use product.
In the next 10 years, the waste that slides into waterways, and ultimately the oceans, will reach 22 million tons and possibly as much as 58 million tons a year.
Traditional plastic bottles are made out of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). It's a lightweight and flexible material that doesn't decompose easily, mainly because bacteria cannot consume and break down the chemicals used in PET. A plastic bottle made from PET takes around 450 years to decompose.
It takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Unfortunately, the bags don't break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute the environment.
or 20 grams. that's the same weight as a 4x2 lego brick in a year that's almost a hundred thousand plastics or about 250 grams that's a dinner plates worth of shredded plastic.
About 75% of global plastics produced are thermoplastics that can be melted and molded over and over to produce new plastics, which – in theory – makes all thermoplastics recyclable. The remaining 25% of plastics are thermoset plastics that do not soften when exposed to heat, making them near-impossible to recycle.
Here are some plastic pollution statistics that matter: Globally to date, there is about 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world – some 6.3 billion tons of that is trash. Imagine 55 million jumbo jets and that's how much plastic exists here.
For example, if a person is called plastic, he or she is probably fake or insincere.
Instead of breaking down, it breaks up – into smaller and smaller pieces, leaching toxins and threatening wildlife, causing irreversible damage to our ecosystems. Plastic is not only bad for the environment; it can also have a negative effect on our health.
Plastics manufacturers turned to making consumer products as an outlet for the materials they developed in the war. Polyester was introduced in the 1950s, and polypropylene, today one of the most used polymers in the world, got its start as a commodity in 1954, becoming a very useful polymer due to its adaptability.
Norway recycles 97% of its plastic bottles.
Plastic is used across almost every sector, including to produce packaging, in building and construction, in textiles, consumer products, transportation, electrical and electronics and industrial machinery.
But all polymers are, technologically, 100% recyclable. Some of them have the perfect cradle-to-cradle lifecycle: they can be used again and again to produce the same goods. Some plastics can be reused just as they are by shredding an object into flakes, melting it, and reusing.
Number 1 Plastics: PET or PETE (polyethelene terephthalate)
Recycling: Pick up available through most curbside recycling programs. Recycled Into: Polar fleece, fiber, tote bags, furniture, carpet, paneling, straps, (occasionally) new containers It poses low risk of leaching breakdown products.
Dead whales have been found with bellies full of plastic.
Most of the plastic in our oceans comes from land-based sources: by weight, 70% to 80% is plastic that is transported from land to the sea via rivers or coastlines. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources such as fishing nets, lines, ropes, and abandoned vessels.
How much plastic are we ingesting? Some scientists have estimated the average person might eat 5 grams of microplastics in a week—about the weight of a credit card. Another study breaks that down to up to 52,000 particles annually from various food sources.
A recent study by OrbMedia analyzed 159 water samples, sourced from both tap water and bottled water in 14 countries, and found that over 80% of all samples contained tiny plastic particles, with an average of 4.34 plastic particles per liter of water.
Without plastic, you also wouldn't be able to use electricity, there would be no plastic circuits to build your phone or computer. There would be no inexpensive adapters either. We also wouldn't be able to protect wildlife like rhinos from becoming extinct, nor would we be able to keep ourselves safe.
However, even after we begin working with other types of waste, we won't run out of plastic in my lifetime. We just won't. There is more than 9 billion tons of plastic waste in the world. 91 percent of that is not recycled.
Plastic does not decompose. This means that all plastic that has ever been produced and has ended up in the environment is still present there in one form or another. Plastic production is booming since the 1950s.