Plastics production increased from 1.5 million. T in 1950 at ~322 million. This means that all the plastic that has been produced and that has ended up in the environment is still present there in one form or another. Plastic production has been booming since the 1950s.
For this reason, and since plastic is not biodegradable, there is an accumulation or accumulation of plastic as more and more is released to the environment. So what about the plastic in the oceans? It builds up in certain places due to rain, wind, or ocean currents, but some of it may simply remain in places where plastic waste is dumped. According to a new study, more than 9 billion tons of plastic have been manufactured since the 1950s, and the vast majority has been thrown away. A team of researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Georgia and the Maritime Education Association state that, although plastic materials such as bakelite were used at the beginning of the 20th century, their popularity began to increase rapidly after World War II, making it one of the most used artificial materials. For example, researchers estimated that the amount of plastic being used now is 30 percent of all the plastic that has ever been produced.
The document says it is the first attempt to measure the total amount of plastic produced since the beginning of mass plastic production in the mid-20th century. 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 contained in the plastic. But plastics have become so pervasive that you can't go anywhere without finding plastic waste in our environment, including our oceans. Despite the bleak picture shown by the results of the study, the authors insisted that they do not want to eliminate plastic from the market, but rather that they want to see a much more responsible and sustainable use of plastic.
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.
