Plastic production has increased considerably over the past 70 years. In 1950, the world produced just two million tons. It now produces more than 450 million tons. Despite the bleak picture shown by the results of the study, the authors insisted that they do not want to withdraw plastic from the market, but rather that they want to see a much more responsible and sustainable use of plastic. Plastic factories like this one in China are increasing the production of virgin plastic, even though plastic pollution is spreading to the oceans in unprecedented volumes.
The problem of plastic waste is an issue that is increasingly difficult to ignore, since it is estimated that there are currently 150 million tons of plastic in the world's oceans and another 12.2 million tons each year, most of which come from terrestrial sources and can cause significant damage to marine fauna if ingested, as demonstrated by a study carried out by the Grantham Institute of Imperial College London in the Arctic Circle. Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets at the ACC, says that demand for plastic products, such as lightweight automotive parts and materials used in housing construction, including insulation and water pipes, will only grow. This document provides reliable data not only on the amount of plastic we have manufactured over the years, but also on its composition and the amount and type of additives that the plastic contains. Both projects attracted the attention of the plastics industry, which soon praised the research, but dismissed the idea of reducing virgin plastic production as “highly counterproductive and impractical”, in the words of the American Chemistry Council, a trade group in the petrochemical industry.
It's simply cheaper to manufacture new plastic than to collect, sort and process disposable plastic to turn it into a new raw material. But plastics have become so pervasive that you can't go anywhere without finding plastic waste in our environment, including our oceans.
